


On My Worst Enemy

by Laryna6



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laryna6/pseuds/Laryna6
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Age of Robotics ended with a Destruction Order. X awakens in a world that killed his family, where he's under a death sentence not just for having free will, but for having a will at all. Taken in by people working to save the world, what will he do when another threat arises? When it asks him not if he thinks he can win, but what he's even fighting for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All throughout writing, I called this the fic I shouldn’t be working on. 
> 
> There’s now Word of God that says that the theory that Zero killed everyone in a Cataclysm is wrong, that such a thing is ‘not part of his character.’ This has very bad implications for what did happen to the robot masters, especially given a certain Classic game made after that point, and interesting implications about Zero.
> 
> Zero is someone who does not hesitate to slaughter in a good cause: not just the identification as a weapon in Zero series, but the Maverick Wars included fighting Sigma, who he admired, and, well, Repliforce. Just Repliforce.
> 
> On the face of it, it really doesn’t seem that unlikely that a Zero could have followed Wily’s orders instead of those of the Maverick Hunters. That he would have hesitated to kill whoever it took to bring about someone’s ideals until he either got immunity to the virus or learned enough to realize that those ideals were wrong.
> 
> Even though Zero’s inability to have compassion is independent of the virus and seems quite a bit more effective than Wily’s evil chip ever was. Even that hundred-year hibernation doesn’t seem to have given him a normal reaction to seeing people suffering: he helps Ciel when she’s in trouble because that suits his own philosophy, not because he’s gotten the standard sympathy circuit one. 
> 
> So this is an AU based on canon, thinking about what all this would mean for the world, for X and for a Zero/Omega who woke up in 21XX without the irregularity that made him berserk and wiped his memory. I’ve also had WilyAI and LightAI interact with the two of them more than in canon. 
> 
> I’ve also adopted Hitoshi Ariga’s Mega Man Megamix and Gigamix background for Drs. Light and Wily to replace my headcanon, at least in the ‘verse of this fic.

Hands carefully curling around the cup of tea, he lifted it up and breathed in the steam. He wondered, again, whether the instant feeling of just a little relief, that he could breathe just a little bit easier was psychosomatic or not, but decided, just as he had every morning since he’d noticed the phenomenon, that he didn’t want to look it up just in case it went away.

Or maybe it was that he always had this first cup of tea in the greenhouses. So that deep breath of steam didn’t only carry with it the scent of real, ancient tea, the kind that would have been wiped out ten times over by now if they didn’t have the genes on file and it wasn’t _so_ much easier to get the funding to work on techniques to restore extinct plant species if it was _this_ species. 

It was when he breathed in the green, and after he’d swallowed that first sip came the cheerful, “Good morning, Dr. Cain,” from a cheerful young face.

He nodded good morning in response as he sat down on the bench next to Alex, who was halfway through his own cup, as usual these days. He’d taken his own work gloves off to handle the cup and spoon, and brought Dr. Cain’s with him, Cain saw when he looked down at the bench.

It was taking Dr. Cain a little longer to get through decontamination, and he’d told Alex not to wait and let his own cup get cold. The tea plant’s lack of genetic variety left it terribly vulnerable to plant diseases, and amazing how much easier it was to get funding for a secure, experimental greenhouse if it was going to be one of the plants grown there.

They had grad students whose job it was to take care of the plants and make sure that all the benefactors got their hotly-negotiated share, but the university itself demanded its own share, for formal events and the faculty whose work produced it.

Dr. Cain was grateful, not because he liked the taste (leaf juice would always be leaf juice, especially since the last thing he needed was to go around spooning refined sugar into things), but because of the scent of it, and the steam, and the warmth in his hands. “And how are you doing this morning?” he asked Alex.

The tea bush was also surprisingly good at soaking up minerals, like, oh, floride, out of the soil.

With over a century with nothing to do but experience simulations and tinker with itself, Alex’s body was almost as refined as his mind. His need for specific materials, for trace amounts of rare minerals, meant he had to watch what he ate almost as closely as a vegan. Mineral supplements might exist, and buying them was a lot less suspicious than buying other things, but no one was going to put arsenic into a mineral supplement.

Even if humans, as it turned out, could get sick from arsenic deficiency. And they weren’t even robotic.

At least Alex’s body would tell him what it needed, and there was almost always _some_ way to find enough of even the rare earth elements without cracking open a rechargeable battery, eating lightbulb filaments or doing anything else that might put the young man in danger, if anyone saw.  

“I’m alright.” A flash of a reassuring smile before Alex’s face grew serious. “Variant F still isn’t showing any signs of recovery. We’re waiting on the test results, but it’s not looking like a disease. Just failure to thrive.” And of course they would have blocked the experiment for mineral content of the soil, amount of sunlight, climate and temperature… “If it was a disease, that would be one thing,” a lot of ancient plant species had no defenses against the microbes that had spent millennia learning how to munch their relatives. “But my guess is that we’re missing a symbiote.” The way legumes relied on their nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

“Have we got any spare plots with the Amazonian microbial soil?” Dr. Cain asked, because if the plants needed more of a certain kind of microbial activity (that was very likely, given how the soil back then compared to the semi-desertified soil they were hoping to adapt these plants to survive in) then if putting them in that soil let them thrive, it would just be a matter of figuring out which particular species was helping them by doing what. At least it would confirm that they _could_ be helped. “Although perhaps we should first check whether it’s willing to germinate unassisted at all.” In _theory_ this species should be able to take care of itself, but if not, then best to find out before they tied up the botanical equivalent of a life-support bed for weeks. Not to mention that one plant they’d tried that defended itself against marauding microbes so viciously that it had damn near sterilized the soil for a few feet around it.

Then there was the one whose pollen didn’t seem toxic until all their bee queens died, first to be hit with the slow poison thanks to their diets. Well, no wonder those two had gone extinct, if that was how they treated the life forms that might have helped them.

Alex had offered to do the initial care on all their new specimens, but Dr. Cain had pointed out that he was offering because he _wouldn’t_ get sick, and then what would happen if the next person did? Alex might have quite a lot of abilities, but even though he did keep track of things like the oxygen content of the air around him, his sense of smell was on par with a human’s and could also help check for the minerals he needed, his built-in sensors weren’t sufficient to test for all the tricks living things had evolved to kill each other with over millions of years. Quite a lot of that analysis was going on at the equivalent of the cellular level, but while X’s nanites had plenty of selenium and floride to practice on, there weren’t exactly any lilies of the valley growing in that capsule, or any other reason for X to learn what chemicals killed humans or how to identify them.

Drat. There he went, forgetting to think of X as Alex again.

* * *

It was almost frightening how easy it was.

Decades of field expeditions have taught him that something is always going to go wrong. It’s a fact of nature, a fact of life, and certainly not something to be upset about.

Pack extra water. Assume that equipment is going to break down, and bring a spare or some parts. Assume that someone’s going to get sick, heatstroke or something else, or trip over something in the rapidly-changing elevations of a dig site, and bring a first aid kit and salt tablets.

He’s tried to teach this to all his students. That _something_ is going to go wrong. It’s not their fault, and there’s no need to apologize: he’s not going to bite their head off for things going according to plan, after all.

By this point, it’s almost a ritual: the laugh of relief when someone forgets to release the parking brake (accidently-on-purpose, if it’s one of the TAs and the younger grad students seem too wound up), because there it is, they’ve gotten the one thing that goes wrong on every trip out of the way, smooth sailing from here on out.

He can only be glad that he only had his two closest co-workers with him when this happened.

Except that’s one more way in which everything that could go right went right.

Perhaps it’s not that the universe is saving it all off for the moment something goes horribly wrong.

Perhaps it’s trying to make up for something that went wrong so, so long ago.

No. Not something that went wrong. Something that _was_ wrong.

Something that had the other two professors looking at him, and the question wasn’t whether or not they were going to tell anyone what they’d found or destroy it themselves.

It was bury him again, let him stay hidden until the world became a safer place for him (if it ever did) or wake him up, because right now he was lying there, asleep and _helpless_ and what if someone else found him?

They should have thought of the good of the world. They’d all spent enough years working for it. To make the world a better place. But creating change meant understanding that change was necessary, and _why_ change was necessary. All of them knew why they’d gone into this field in the first place. Why it was necessary. Why it _shouldn’t_ have become so urgently necessary. How damned _stupid_ their ancestors had been. No, not just stupid. Evil.

He’d like to think that he woke X up so he could live free, be as safe as it as possible for him to be. To make up, in some small way, for humanity’s wrongdoing. Yet was it really about karma, about what was morally right, or was it about what was practically right?

When humanity killed the robot masters, they hadn’t just committed genocide. They’d killed the goose that lay the golden eggs.

It was not Dr. Cain’s imagination that there was something pointed about the addendum to Dr. Light’s message, that X did not have the capabilities of a robot master, and that no one who took him apart to get their hands on Dr. Light’s technology would learn anything from it.

This creation, this child, wasn’t Dr. Light’s last gift to the world.

Not the world that ordered his other children destroyed.

Yet X was still a product of the mind that created that breed of sentient machines. Machines with emotions and judgment. Machines that were people. If he survived, perhaps, someday, as it became harder and harder to ignore the costs of the Destruction Order…

Perhaps X could restore to them the technology that was restoring their world, before they threw it all away.

The technology that made space exploration possible a century ago, while these days they couldn’t even repair the satellites they had in orbit around their own planet, much less send missions to other ones.

Once the sky was as blue as this robot’s armor (armor? When the legends said Dr. Light hated sending Mega Man to fight? There was no question who he’d armored this child to fight, and it shamed them, and perhaps it made them wish to be better than that).

When those eyes opened, they were green.

Dr. Cain didn’t think he was the one to let out that sigh of relief, but perhaps they all had.

There could be no better omen.

It was amazingly, worryingly easy to establish Hikari Alex, who preferred just Alex to the nice-sounding Japanese word (at least it _could_ be a last name) someone had attached to the orphan who’d been found in what was left of Brazil. Eventually someone’d thought they’d identified him and had him shipped up to America, but a second blood test revealed that the first had been fudged and he was stuck in a foster home that had flooded out (along with the rest of the town) after he’d left it and started to help an old couple in exchange for room, board and online educational fees, in an arrangement that was far from legal (especially if the IRS heard about it)...

Dr. Cain had just been left boggled the first time he saw it all spread out before him. Aged documents, with their equivalents entered in all the appropriate systems, he was sure. How would Alex know enough about the world when he’d only been born into it a week ago to come up with all of this? Would it fall apart the first time someone wondered why Dr. Cain was browbeating the university into giving one of his spots to someone no online course instructor would remember asking them for help?

“My father helped me,” X explained, seeing Dr. Cain’s eyes widen and perhaps start to glaze over a little, a preemptive defense against all that paperwork. “The AI in the capsules has been keeping an eye on things. He couldn’t wake me up by himself. Only someone who was a part of this world had the right to release me into it.”

When even though Dr. Light couldn’t have wanted anyone to destroy his last child, he’d still left that message.

X had to do the potential to do anything he put his mind to. Including conquering the world. But what sane person would want what was left of it? Putting aside the current administration.

“Are you certain that no one detected anything…” Dr. Cain trailed off, because if Alex wasn’t certain, then surely he wouldn’t still be here? Powerful android or not, brother of the legendary Mega Man or not, Dr. Light’s last creation and the fruit of all his work to keep his other son alive against Wily’s robots or not (but in the end, it was the world he’d saved that…).

X shook his head, and came around to Dr. Cain’s side of the table to smile at him reassuringly. “The hacking protocols were written to go up against systems with robot masters plugged into them, or at least mother computers.”

Which were also capable of emotions, and ignoring standing orders and their functions because of their emotions. So they were also banned, even though originally they were meant as a more docile alternative to robot masters. The first one to be placed in charge of a city’s network was also the last, Dr. Cain knew now, even if he’d tried not to obviously be reading up on something so far outside his specialty as robotics.

The exploits of Rock’s brother were the stuff of children’s books, now, the world divided between those who remembered the heroism, saw someone who saved the world so many times killed for being a ‘racial inferior’ and those who were part of the system that destroyed the robot masters, that landed the world in this mess, and felt they had to justify the actions of their predecessors. And, of course, as always, there were those who were just cowards, frightened of anything new and different. The kind of people who sabotaged research meant to save the world before too much of its arable land eroded away, before the percentage of oxygen in its atmosphere sunk too low. Fear of robots going out of control seemed ridiculous now, when the rest of earth’s lifeforms had never _been_ under any control at all.

Humanity changed the world. The rest of the planet adapted to the changes. And those adaptations spurred further changes, and further adaptations, and multicellular life was far, far too slow to keep up. Perhaps it was easier for him to not be afraid of X, and the potential and danger he represented, when he was well, well aware that humanity was already staring extinction in the face.

Dr. Light couldn’t save his other children, so he built X, a completely different species from both Dr. Light and his brothers and sisters. Had Dr. Cain woken up X because he was afraid of failure? Because he wanted _something_ born of humanity to live on, to inherit this world?

Eyes of green. Dr. Light’s last hope, the seed flung into the future. How many seeds had he and his team dug up out of the ground, searching, hoping, for ones that could thrive, could hold back the tide?

“If you’re sure,” he told X-Alex. “I should start remembering your new name. Hikari Alex…”

“Alex Hikari might be better,” X said a little apologetically, and Dr. Cain didn’t realize why until he looked up what ‘hikari’ meant.

If the boy had a malicious bone in his body, Dr. Cain would have wondered if Alex was trying to give him a heart attack. Protector Light? Since old-style Japanese family names were written as ‘of something,’ Protector of Light? Protector who belongs to the Light family?

Then again, while Alex looked like a human, the resemblance was only skin deep. If anyone started to look, then Alex needed to know, to flee, before they began to dig deeper.

So perhaps a name that would give the game away the moment anyone looked it up wasn’t such a bad idea. A tripwire, something that hopefully might inspire whoever was trying to catch him to act before they were ready. Or make them underestimate someone who was foolish enough to pick a pseudonym like that.


	2. Chapter 2

Except for the University, the once-thriving city had become a ghost town thanks to the very fact it once hosted so many people. As the infrastructure began to break down, systems that used to be reliable suddenly no longer were. Old skills could be rediscovered, but when the sewage system broke down, and the sea rose, and containers that no one knew were there started to dissolve…

Finding abandoned buildings wasn’t a problem, even though the university had started to buy up the area around it for redevelopment. So far, all the new inhabitants were moving into the new construction there, and the outskirts were still deserted and probably rather affordable, even though Dr. Light’s attempts to leave X a trust fund had fallen afoul of several governments’ determined, decades-long attempts to find money that didn’t belong to anyone who could complain too loudly if it was nationalized.

Alex had bought a ‘house,’ and told various people who looked very daunted and asked him again to be sure: he was living _where_? In a building that used to be a _bank?_

Sure, he might smile, push back unruly hair and talk about how interesting it was to have a fixer-upper, and it was well-looted before he got there so no, he wasn’t worried about ‘treasure hunters’ coming in armed as well as the usual run of robbers, and how there was a large room with a high ceiling that was mostly intact and he would be putting in skylights over the holes.

The important part was that the safe was still there. And anything in there couldn’t be scanned.

The life-support capsule and most of the equipment from where X was found wasn’t here. Cain was a little relieved at that: it was good that X had somewhere else, and if Cain didn’t know where it was, all the better. Here there was only some basic equipment, probably mostly the android version of medical if Cain was any judge (which he wasn’t), and something else.

That armor.

“I wish you didn’t need them.” He would have prayed that Alex never would, if he was the sort to delude himself into thinking that worked.

“My father also wished that I didn’t need them. That he’d never had to build them, either this one or the original.” Alex’s brother’s armor. The android took the old man’s hand in his own, and the warmth was so very human, just like the eyes. Artifice in the service of truth. “Dr. Cain… I know that you’re a good man. That’s why you and your colleagues, of all the people who passed by over that century, are the ones that they allowed to find me.”

As flattering at that was, “They?” Dr. Cain asked, a little surprised.

Alex looked a little guilty, the bit of an indrawn breath that was his tell, the way biting his lip was Dr. Cain’s. Alex didn’t like lying, or keeping secrets, which he’d confessed was another reason he’d picked a name so like his real one. So he felt less like he was lying to people, every time he told them who he was. Every time they greeted him as a friend. “We’re not… certain.” Although that was mostly an excuse, and to buy time. “And either way, it’s not my secret to tell. If some people were helping me, making sure that I was alright, then putting them in danger wouldn’t be a very good way to repay them. My father’s AI was monitoring the planetary networks, and who was considering making an offer for where I was buried, but… there were a few close calls, but I was safe for a century.” In such a busy world, one with such a need for arable land.

Turning back to the device he was working on, Alex clearly didn’t want to keep talking, and Dr. Cain didn’t want to press him. So he coughed and said, “I’m glad you were safe. How are you feeling? Do you need more fish?” The very thing that made the meat from apex sea predators so healthy for X (large concentrations of dissolved heavy metals) made it effectively a controlled substance, these days, especially in a country that used to get most of its food from the sea. Canned salmon and tuna had labels on them warning that they were dangerously carcinogenic. Individuals were only allowed to buy so much so often, and had to give their ID so it could be entered into a registry same as if they were buying something that could be made into a dangerous drug. That way, if they came down with cancer because of it the state could declare that it was their own damn fault and require them to pay for the treatments themselves.

Between the four of them, they were able to keep Alex supplied without buying enough for the store clerks that handled things like fish, tobacco and firearms to give them the _why are you not dead yet_ look, but it was something they could do to help out, now that Alex had moved out, had his own ID and a job (even if with them) and didn’t need help figuring out what to wear to university events versus grad student nights out anymore.

Cain was sure that with Alex’s access to hacking, he could manage to get all the fish he needed on his own, but there were cybersecurity specialists, and… he was just worried.

“I’m fine,” Alex reassured him. “Is there something bothering you?” He blinked, looking up, and then glancing at the chair he’d pulled out for his friend: was there a reason Dr. Cain wasn’t sitting down?

“I’m just getting a little older,” Cain said, and stopped himself from nervously shifting his weight to his other leg by sitting down. “I’m worried about you. Dr. Ciel will be the next head of the department if anything happens,” so between her and Dr. Vilnus, they should be able to make Alex’s credentials impeccable, make sure he got that PhD and spent enough time among students that anyone doing a background check would be able to find at least _some_ people who had met him, who could vouch for him.

“I appreciate the thought,” Alex said, frowning a little, “but even though I’m glad you’ve started to think about your health…” What had brought that on? When Dr. Ciel, who had practically celebrated years ago when her hair color changed from blonde to electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) because when you were blonde, people _actively wanted to believe that you were stupid_ , either so that you’d be dumb enough not to realize what a jerk they were and sleep with them or so that they could feel better about themselves, had been trying to get him to slow down for decades before Alex came onto the scene?

(Slow down, she’d said, take care of yourself a little more, she’d said. The world might have only so much time left, but if you die before we come up with something? Do you want to die with your work undone?)

“I’m,” Dr. Cain started to say, started to lie and say he was fine, but even if Alex was too principled to look at confidential medical records, once actual treatments started… And Alex had a right to know.

Dr. Cain had always wanted a child, but it just hadn’t happened, he’d never had the time. Students and grad students passed through his hands, and now Alex. Alex wasn’t his, but the child with those green eyes had needed him. To survive in this dying world, this world desperate for a chance to survive. For any edge that might let it survive.

“They want me back at the hospital tomorrow for the test results,” he told Alex.

“I’ll go with you,” Alex said instantly, putting down the panel he’d unscrewed. “I mean, if you want me to.” Was he imposing? He wasn’t a blood relative.

But Dr. Cain didn’t have a next of kin, unless he counted his fellows in the department. Both of whom were getting on in years a little themselves. He didn’t want to worry them, but then he hadn’t wanted to worry Alex. He’d woken up to discover his entire family was dead: Dr. Cain didn’t want to remind him of that. Didn’t want the child to worry about him.

But Dr. Cain was getting rather worried himself.

* * *

“I’ve got a security system and I’ve locked everything in the safe,” Alex told him when Dr. Cain tried again to object. “So my things will be fine. I stayed with you before. You still haven’t moved any of your things back into my room.” A room that was once piled with books and relics was still a neat and actually slightly dusty guest room. They both knew who Dr. Cain had left that space open for. “It’s no bother at all, not compared to what all of you did for me,” he said, forestalling another objection as he stopped next to a van and opened the door.

Silver, which made sense. White and silver reflected heat, so the cars didn’t heat up so badly without shade. With white there was the risk of the car getting lost in the snow, on some expedition to somewhere that still had snow. “You didn’t tell me you brought a car,” Dr. Cain said as he pushed himself up out of the chair.

“I found it this week,” Alex said firmly. “It wasn’t that much.” So Dr. Cain wasn’t going to object to Alex buying a car just for this.

Dr. Cain opened his mouth to point out that he did have a truck, but the cab of it was rather high off the ground (flooding precautions) and it _was_ rather roomy in here. Perfect for transporting things that needed a little more protection from the elements than a truck could provide. It would be useful to Alex, next time he did fieldwork instead of labwork, gardenwork and tinkering with the plants.

Still, so much trouble on his account, he thought, settling down in the chair. He was glad Alex didn’t try to buckle the seatbelt for him, he was perfectly capable of that, even if he was supposed to stay off his feet for awhile.

“I’m not going to be able to argue you out of this,” Dr. Cain knew, and admitted once Alex got into the driver’s seat and glanced back at him before starting the engine. “So I insist on paying you what the nurse they would have gotten me would have charged.”

“I’ll be staying with you,” Alex reminded him. “I’m not a medical professional, although I have been looking up some information,” or would that be downloading some data? “But if you won’t argue with me about this, then I won’t argue with you paying me half of what would have come out of your pocket for someone without certification.” He’d let Dr. Cain have that much, for his pride’s sake. “If you want to.” He didn’t want Dr. Cain to think he _had_ to pay him.

“I insist,” the old professor said gruffly.

Alex glanced at him in the rearview mirror, and Cain did think that if Alex wasn’t driving, he might have leaned back to throw an arm around him. Call it what it was: given him a hug. “I want to do it,” Alex said quietly. “No one should have to die alone.”

Like your father? Cain almost asked that, but thought better quickly enough to hold his tongue. Dr. Light had been found dead in his lab, seemingly of a stroke. Alone in the house except for nonsentient robots: X must have already been completed and moved to another location. His other children were already gone, even more permanently.

The biography he’d picked up had mentioned that this was just ahead of proceedings to have him put in a private hospital by the same group of investors that just happened to end up with a controlling interest in a company whose riches came from robot masters, and whose non-sentient robots were designed to work in tandem with robot masters.

Earlier in his life, it would never have occurred to Dr. Cain that Dr. Light had foreseen the economic collapse that happened when the entire world’s top technology was deprived of the tech support it was designed to have. It _had_ occurred to plenty of others.

Dr. Light’s revenge. Hundreds of millions dead, if you added them up over the century, in the depression, wars, ongoing ecological collapse. His revenge for his dead children.

There were many who considered him no better than Dr. Wily. Plenty who considered him worse. How many had Wily killed, really? Compared to fusion plants going from reliable technology, with all other power generation forms besides the solar Dr. Light had advocated for rapidly being phased out, to working for maybe five seconds at a time, at _most_ , since no human could react fast enough and no non-sentient robot could react intelligently enough to manage a sustained cold fusion reaction?

Had Dr. Light killed himself, or let the brain uploading procedure kill him? The second was more likely, but if he started to go senile, if he was put on pain medication, what then? He’d been incredibly healthy for someone his age, he’d exercised regularly and there were pictures of him practicing punches and kicks in his yard, far more energetic than one would expect of someone of that size and age.

The more years he lived, the more chances for him to let slip something that led them to suspect X’s existence. To sign the death warrant of his youngest, his last child.

Dr. Light should have had his children with him at the end, to sit by his bedside and keep him company. To tell him about their days, that they’d have a bright future. He should have hated the world, but could someone who hated the world bring forth a child like X-Alex. Had to remember not to talk about Alex’s real name himself.

He needed to stay out of the hospital himself, as much as possible. And not only because he had work to do. “So, it seems I have a nursemaid,” Dr. Cain said, and sighed.

“I seem to recall you calling yourself my babysitter once,” X said, and in the mirror Dr. Cain could see that he was looking up at the ceiling of the car instead of the road, for just a moment.

“Touche.”

* * *

“How are you managing?” Dr. Ciel burst into his office to ask, without any preamble.

“I thought the cane would at least let me point things out on the blackboard.” It still involved too much walking, and waving the cane in the air meant he couldn’t use it. “X loaned me a laser pointer, but then that damnfool fraternity decided to buy twenty of the same color.” The sad thing about this being a teaching university. Inspiring future generations to continue his work was starting to seem even more important, under the circumstances. The trouble was the future generations.

“It’s alright to slip,” she told him. “At this point, we’ve known him long enough that it works as a nickname.

“I slipped? Drat,” he said, and sighed, but he took her point. Better to be nonchalant about it than to start and look cross with himself every time he said the name. It would attract far less attention that way.

“Do you need anything?” she asked him. “Besides for me to take over the class and bring some agricultural _anthropology_ into it.”

“Boys will be boys, and try to ruin everyone else’s learning experience and tire out a sick, old man, but that doesn’t justify shattering all their hopes and dreams that they’ll ever amount to anything,” he told her. “They’re counting on me being too tired to get in a fight with the administration over failing soccer players, aren’t they.”

“Are you _still_ sure you don’t want me to fight for justice and get some jocks to drop out of college and make way for students who value the opportunity to learn?” Dr. Ciel asked him hopefully.

“Ask me again on Friday,” he told her.

“I’ll ask you after next _Monday’s_ class,” she decided, and he had to chuckle. They knew him so well.

* * *

Monday morning came, and with it sirens. He woke to see X looking worriedly out the window (when had he come in Dr. Cain’s room?) flashes of red and yellow casting odd shadows on his pale face. “I’ll turn on the news,” he told Dr. Cain.

The old professor didn’t need to be told to get ready to evacuate.

“My armor and the university are in opposite directions,” he heard X mutter to himself when he came back in, almost pacing. He’d never seen X any degree of frazzled.

“Your armor?” X was referring to it aloud?

“There’s… Someone built a warbot,” X told him. “Humanoid. And he can talk. It left someone alive long enough to convey a message.”

“A warbot?” Someone had rediscovered how to build robot masters?

Or that was what Dr. Cain first guessed, until X drew in his shoulders, as though the weight of the world had just landed on them. “A Wilybot.”


	3. Chapter 3

A Wilybot. His family’s enemy. The opponents of the legendary Mega Man.

“You can’t be thinking of getting your armor,” Dr. Cain told him, horrified.

“I redid it,” X told him, looking to the side. No, out the window again. There weren’t any emergency vehicles going by now, but they could hear them still, in the distance. The sounds that came from outside now were frantic voices, cars starting up and speeding out of the neighborhood and, judging from the crash he’d heard a few minutes ago, being too panicked to drive safely. The crash had just made everyone else more worried that there was a robot here, now, and now even more of them were racing to abandon their homes. “It shouldn’t be so obvious whose brother I am now.” And he’d already added a face mask. “I can teleport there and back, so I don’t need to worry about being followed.”

“Do you even know the first thing about how to fight?” Dr. Cain asked him.

“I _was_ undergoing simulations for a century,” X said, tightening his grasp on the curtains, feeling the teal fabric bunch up in his hand, and hoped Dr. Cain took that as an answer. He had movement programming, combat subroutines, everything his family had learned from years of trying to help Rock survive, but there was a warning in the documentation that although they’d tried to compensate for his greater height and thus center of mass, even though his _weight_ was pretty close to Rock’s when armored (and much, much less unarmored, since they were trying to let him pass for a human of equivalent height and build), he was definitely going to have to at least test out all the movement routines and well, he hadn’t.

He’d _meant_ to, there was a cave system of a decent size that the AI had brought to his attention as a good place to practice against imaginary opponents and he’d built a third cache there, but honestly, he’d much rather _build_ things that would let him survive in hiding than fight to survive. He wanted to create, not destroy, much less kill. So he just hadn’t found the time for it.

X decided soon after he woke up that he’d only fight if he had no alternative, so the more alternatives he had, the harder it would be for anyone to eliminate them, one by one. He _had_ worked on that, partially because the AI and his friends were worried, partially because _he_ was worried and it was something productive to do, and quite a lot because he didn’t want to hurt anyone. If he had to shoot people with a buster, even in self-defense, then why _would_ they ever change the laws, why would more people like Dr. Cain have any reason to trust robots?

Now another android, or robot master, was killing people, and the central fact of the matter was, “I can’t just stand by and let this happen. I have to stop them.” People were _dying_ out there.

No. People were being _slaughtered_ out there.

The reporters on the broadcasts kept emphasizing that many of them were children or otherwise helpless, were fleeing instead of even trying to fight back, and ‘stood no chance’ as though this was a surprise to them. Everyone knew that even in 20XX, it took a robot master to fight another robot master, and since robot masters were extinct now, no one had invested research money in trying to come up with body armor that would let a human last even a few seconds against a master’s weapon, and absolutely no one now had the programming skill to even attempt to make a combat drone that could resist being hacked by one.

Combat drone research and production had halted in its tracks after the first Wily War (X refused to call them Robot Wars), and the world’s militaries had gone through and decomputerized what they could, but now, a century later, after wars against humans?

There was a military base close to the university, left over from the days when this was a thriving city and maintained because the university was a valuable resource and they could have research done here.

Going there, taking their drones, security robots (primitive by 20XX standards) and tanks was the first thing this robot master had done, and the news programs were already contacting consultants, who were observing and explaining just what kind of efficiency boosts the drones and robots were getting, and would _continue_ to get, in the hands of a robot master who could adjust their programming.

That led X to query the AI, and wince. He’d hoped that he’d be wrong.

“What is it, X?” Dr. Cain asked, seeing the shudder.

“Some people are looking at this, and they’re _excited_. They want to recover some of the robots and drones intact afterwards for the improvements.” How could anyone think like that, at a time like this? “They’re going to try seizing one of the tanks first.” The ones dispatched to guard the main exit roads. ‘Guard’ was such a nice and absolutely wrong way to say ‘shoot down everyone who’s trying to get themselves, their friends and family to safety.’

Getting people to safety…

Dr. Cain’s house wasn’t _too_ close to the university, but…

X _had_ to try to stop this before more people (yet more, so many dead already) were killed, but what if he _didn’t_ win? Or didn’t do it quickly enough. Especially since he had to choose between attacking some of the robots first to at least try out his systems or attacking the robot master first and retaining the element of surprise?

Dr. Cain’s house wasn’t safe. X’s house had the safe, and was far enough away from the populated districts (although people were starting to flee into the outskirts to try to hide) that it should take some time for the robots to make their way there. But it would take time to drive there, especially with people in the streets, and that was time during which more people could die.

“Well, that makes sense.” A sigh from the old man. “Going after the most heavily armored targets…”

“They _are_ on the edges of the city,” X said, in fairness. “They’re keeping people from fleeing, so if one of them was destroyed, and people had a chance to get out…” His shoulders hunched in, because all of this: it was so wrong. Why didn’t everyone see that? It didn’t take a _century_ of ethical testing to see that… what on earth did this robot master think they were accomplishing! By just running around and killing people!

…Systems testing? The same thing that X had neglected to do?

Treating people like they were, were _moving targets_ : that wasn’t any better. It was just _disgusting_.

He regretted getting a large silver van now: too easy to see, too easy to hit at a time like this. Dr. Cain’s car was up at the university, so that was out of the question.

If he survived this, he thought, once he paid off the loans on the car and his house he’d have to see about buying a motorcycle, even though he wasn’t fond of the idea of having that little cargo space, of not being able to take a passenger without them having to hold on to him, which increased the odds they’d notice some little thing that wasn’t quite natural.

Dr. Cain wouldn’t care, he thought, and hoped that wasn’t the factor that decided him. He could have called up the process logs, but he didn’t want to know, and it was more urgent to, “Hurry and get to the car. I’ll get your medications, and find the safest route.” Around robots, accidents, exploded wreckage.

He _ached_ for all the people dying right now. All the people who would be left to mourn their friends and families.

But the faculty housing was the first target. The dorms were already gone. The greenhouses were already gone: the drones had first targeted the computer science building and then moved on to the rest of the campus, sciences first.

There was Dr. Cain, and there were the students who commuted in from less desirable neighborhoods and _might_ survive the night, if X could stop this in time, but if he left Dr. Cain here, and _anything_ went wrong, then he might, he very well might, be left the only survivor once again.

* * *

“The streetlights are off,” Dr. Cain whispered, even knowing his voice wouldn’t be heard outside the car, not over the engine. At least X could hear him, even like this.

“They were turned off,” X told him, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the car and the noise around them. “Procedure when bombs are being dropped.”

Ah, Cain realized. He had heard of that, decades ago. It hadn’t been necessary in decades. Someone must have dusted off some old piece of civic planning, although there might still be drills, for officials if not schoolchildren. Sometimes bureaucracy was good for some things.

Without the light, and with the unfamiliar noises and obstructions, Dr. Cain quickly got lost. X had darkened the car’s windows yesterday, with Dr. Cain there in the garage so he could feel like he was keeping X company instead of the other way around, and now it made Dr. Cain feel a little bit safer about sitting up instead of lying down on the floor, which sounded sensible to the part of him worried about wild shots or attack and rather stupid to the part concerned about his back. At least his heart was still in decent condition, the fruit of all those digs.

A moment of sudden stiffness was all his warning before X turned sharply. “The drones teleported out,” he told Dr. Cain, once they were under a bridge or some other overhang. “That could mean they’re leaving the city,” X hoped so, but it also could mean they were going to be sent to random locations in the city, like right on top of them. Dr. Cain was sure that X was taking the safest route, so if the drones _were_ to be used to plug up holes in the search (and destroy) pattern the robots were taking…

X leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the steering wheel. “They reappeared. Over another city.” A shudder now, and Dr. Cain could picture the bombs dropping, knew X had to be watching it, blaming himself for being a peaceful biologist, not a hero.

The only thing he could think of to say was ‘well, they can only be carrying so many bombs,’ but what he really wanted was to tell X not to look.

Or to tell X to leave him, to just go, but X wasn’t any kind of fighter.

Telling him to go because it was his duty when it wasn’t? Because he was the only one who could when there _was_ an international army, there were people whose actual jobs were to do this kind of thing, and surely they must have thought through how they were going to deal with a robot master who decided to fight to survive when they decided to _kill them all_.

Where were the people who X had to hide from for the last century when they would actually come in handy? Why should X have to fight?

Just because he wasn’t human?

An indrawn breath, and “It’s not safe to leave you here.”

Dr. Cain was relieved when the car started moving again, not for his own sake but because hopefully driving and plotting a route would distract X from blaming himself. He wanted to lean forward, to put a hand on the boy’s arm or something, but it was probably important that he stay strapped in. If X had to turn suddenly again, even though this barge wasn’t exactly good at that, he’d blame himself if Dr. Cain got thrown around, and if he were to get injured… Well, if he did get injured, then perhaps that would keep X from going to fight.

It wouldn’t keep X from blaming himself, though, so Dr. Cain’s hand stopped before he undid the buckle.

Finally they stopped again, and X got out of the car. They were in the right neighborhood, Dr. Cain saw when X opened his door. “Why aren’t you getting the car inside the garage?” he asked as X undid his seatbelt.

“It’s not important,” X said. “Sorry,” he apologized, for the indignity of lifting Dr. Cain up out of his seat instead of letting him walk on his own. “I parked a little away from the house.”

If he was worried about the car attracting attention, hinting that someone had left it and gone to ground around here, then was it really such a waste of time to get the car hidden inside the garage? But Dr. Cain didn’t want to distract X by saying that, especially while X was unlocking the front door.

He had to put Dr. Cain down to get the safe open, since it took two hands and some leverage even for an android not just to open it, but to open it without applying enough force to send the door slamming into the wall and creating a din. Dr. Cain might have objected to being picked up again when it was such a short walk to X’s bed and he did have his cane, but then X slung the bag of medications down off his shoulder and he could see the relief in those eyes.

Still so much worry, fear, self-blame and doubt, but at least Dr. Cain was safe, X was clearly thinking. At least he’d managed to (probably) save one person, and he wasn’t going to take that away from him when X was already taking a deep breath and turning to the armor.

He hadn’t just painted it: there were a few more elaborate elements now, not showy but… well, yes, showy, in the way someone building a war robot might want to show off. X’s original armor had looked very basic, and really not concerned with aesthetics the way someone who wanted to sell their product would be. ‘Sleek’ was not a description that could have been applied to the blue armor at all. Just ‘serviceable.’

Dr. Cain might have wondered why X would remodel his armor to look _attractive_ at all, when X hated the thought of fighting, but both of them were well aware that other people did find the idea of robot battles an exciting, appealing prospect.

Until it happened to them, presumably.

The purpose of a disguise was to look like someone else and unlike yourself, and the white-and-chrome armor simply wasn’t X.

“I considered camouflage paint,” X explained, after glancing at Dr. Cain and seeing that he was looking at the armor, “but while I was researching it, I read that when one country’s air force hired scientists to design an optimal sky camouflage pattern for their fighter planes, the pilots painted it over since it wasn’t cool enough and the commanders let them do it,” despite how stupid it was, to make themselves more likely to get shot down, “because they cared about the look of things and the effect they had.” He drew in a breath: X didn’t need to breathe as often as a human did, but he tried to stay in the habit and it was also necessary to talk. “And camouflage is pretty boring for a prototype or demonstration model, much less someone’s hobby. Since I didn’t want people to look at this and think of either a Lightbot or a Wilybot, I thought about what people would do to distance themselves from 20XX robotic designs.” Which were rather clunky. They had to be, given the weight of the robots. “And I wanted something that looked like there might be a human inside.” So there would be at least some possibility in the minds of people who saw him that there was a _person_ inside that suit.

“When did you get this done?” Dr. Cain wondered. The last time he was here, X’s armor looked the same as when they found him, except for the face plate, and X had been very busy since then even before he started staying with Dr. Cain.

“I tried to keep myself busy,” X admitted. “Like working on the car.” Projects, to distract him from worrying about Dr. Cain. “I designed it, but the work was done by a few robots I’ve built, with the AI’s help, to help set things up elsewhere. Just small domestic and construction models.” A glance at Dr. Cain when he admitted that he’d built more robots, even if not robot masters.

“Under the circumstances, I’d feel better if you _had_ built yourself even a small robot army,” Dr. Cain told him. “Can you bring any of them?” he asked hopefully. He’d feel better if X had some help out there.

His friend was already shaking his head. “No. Not when it took control over the security robots and drones so easily. I’m not a robot master, so I don’t want to supply it with reinforcements.” Didn’t want the robots he’d built to be used to kill people.

X watched Dr. Cain get up and knew he should have told him to sit back down, try to rest, or even better sleep until this was over so _someone_ didn’t have to worry, but he still closed his eyes. Let Dr. Cain hug him and returned the hug.

“I wish you wouldn’t go,” Dr. Cain said. “What if this is a military robot? And even if it was one of Dr. Wily’s, this isn’t something you should have to take care of.”

People were dying, someone had to make this stop. “If there was anyone else, they would have come by now,” was what X said. “I can’t stand by and just let more people die.” He wasn’t going to take that to a ridiculous extent, intervene in violent crimes several cities away or put armor on to get a cat out of a tree, but, “I suppose it could be someone in a suit, but if this is a robot master who isn’t a Wilybot, that would just make this even more important. If someone managed to create something like a robot master, and sent them out to kill people when they didn’t know any better, then that just means there’s one more person who needs to be rescued. I _hope_ this is some rogue military project,” X realized, shrugging after it occurred to him that even with his eyes closed, Dr. Cain would be able to feel the gesture right now. “Something like that couldn’t have the infinite potential system, and something Dr. Wily built would have access to even more combat data than I do. A modern robot master… the person who built it wouldn’t have access to Light, Wily or Cossack’s data on what worked and what was a bad idea.” Of course the robot rights activist Dr. Cossack, who had never wanted to build combat models in the first place, hadn’t handed over combat data to anyone who might misuse it.

And the World Robotics Association, which passed the mandatory age retirement laws over Cossack’s and Light’s objections, had been first on that list.

“So there might be a weakness that’ll jump out at my tactical analysis,” X said, trying to look on the bright side. “And yes, it did talk, and claim to be a Wilybot, but there could be a human on the other end of a teleportation-based data link, piloting it and lying about that. If someone’s decided to take up the mantle of Dr. Wily, then…” He stopped himself.

“Then?” Dr. Cain asked.

X shook his head. “I’m sorry, I need to get going.” He couldn’t use talking to Dr. Cain as an excuse. “There’s, well, you know where the water is, and how to open the safe from the inside.” There was food in here too: X hadn’t set this place up to only keep _him_ safe in case of an emergency. “Is there anything you need, before I go?”

“I think that’s everything,” the old professor said, taking a step back from X and patting him on the arm. “Just… be careful out there. Promise me you’ll teleport away if you’re too damaged.”

“I promise,” X said, and didn’t tell him that if this really was a Wilybot, it might be able to deploy a teleportation shield. Just because there wasn’t one up now didn’t mean one might not start up later. “I don’t want to die, and that would be a poor way to repay everything everyone has done for me.”

Dr. Cain. The dead father, brother and sister who worked on him and the systems he’d be buried with, meant to keep him safe. The other two who found him, who were almost certainly…

If there was any real chance that they were still alive, that rescue crews could find them in the rubble if the robot master was defeated and search efforts could start in time, then X would have had to head out right away.

If Dr. Cain hadn’t been the only one left… what of the others who might still survive? The ones he’d abandoned by spending all that time getting his friend to safety?

It was selfish of him, but Dr. Cain was his friend, and…

A century of ethical simulations, trying to devise solutions to problems of right, wrong and people’s lives, and sometimes, there was still no right answer.

Maybe there never would be.


	4. Chapter 4

The mall. The only real mall in the city so far, although there was an indoor one being refurbished that had been under construction since forever. According to Dr. Cain, they really should have knocked down the building and started over, but the History Department was an investor (via their endowment) and got to set terms because of it.

Non-sentient combat robots had already passed through, leaving bodies and blood. Display windows, some smashed by bullets and some, perhaps, by not (just) looters but people trying to find somewhere to take cover. Maybe there were still some of the living here, somewhere. The combat robots weren’t that bright.

That might be why the warbot that had identified itself as Zero to the human and their camera before destroying them both was doing a sweep through here, almost a half-hour since the attack began with an assault on the more populated locations. Like this one. There was the coffee shop which Vilnus and Ciel liked to argue about even as they downed cup after cardboard cup: Vilnus said it was vile stuff, and Ciel said that she’d _had_ real coffee and it was even bitterer.

Around the corner and a few shops down that way was the store that was generally recommended to everyone for field gear. Things were hotter than they’d been in 20XX, but people digging in the ground needed knees that could rest on sandstone and gravel, reinforced work clothes instead of the creations of a local fashion industry dominated by design students and catering to the desire of college students to wear something that would help them get laid. X had taken one look in most of the shops around here and known right away that he couldn’t buy anything there: they’d make him look his physical age. Wearing more concealing ‘grandpa clothes’ helped make people overlook the fact his physical design was younger than the first-year students.

Zero had attacked while it was still dark, but they hadn't vanished with the dawn. It was shaping up to be a hot day. It almost always was. He was glad he could turn off his olfactory sensors, but he could still see the blood on familiar streets, to either side of the warbot that caused it.

Blue eyes looked down at him from a handsome face that seemed mildly curious more than anything, the hue shifting to green as irritation replaced examination. “I don’t even know where to start,” said the killer robot master. “But did you _really_ think that I wouldn’t detect an incoming teleportation within line-of-sight? If you wanted to get the drop on me, you should have appeared behind a building, not tried to do it literally.”

Prioritizing critiquing X’s tactics over everything else that could be said in this kind of situation? With one hand around X’s neck, and the other holding a beam saber right at the shoulder of his buster arm.

That actually wasn’t the first thing the probably-Wilybot (there was a faint W in the helmet crystal, even though it was still possible that was a trick) said to him after it sidestepped X’s drop , batted away the charged shot, and took advantage of when X had to trigger his dash boots to kill the momentum, leaving him relatively stalled in midair while Zero used their _own_ dash boots to get the momentum to knock X into a wall, causing enough systems to suffer some percent degradation while they did minor repairs or otherwise sorted themselves out to make it easier to get X in this position. Although the amount he’d been disoriented… Just being spun around and slammed into a wall shouldn’t have made him _that_ dizzy. He’d been disrupted enough he’d seriously considered a partial reboot of the afflicted drives until his head suddenly cleared.

The first thing his captor said after that was a curt order to unform his buster, which X obeyed. After that token obedience, the stern expression was replaced by assessment, and now here they were.

He couldn’t have accepted an outright demand to surrender, not in good conscience, not when he intended to continue fighting if that was the only way to get the other person to _stop this_ , but letting this ‘Zero’ think they had the upper hand… was sadly true. But while Zero was talking they weren’t attacking, and X could ready his systems and try to think of what to try next.

He’d thought he might learn something valuable if he managed to make the other AI (probably) start talking, but he really hadn’t expected Zero to start dispensing _advice_.

When he didn’t respond, Zero’s eyes narrowed, and that blade gave his shoulder a little nudge, enough to make him feel the energy of the blade but not enough to do more than singe a little, the kind of thing autorepairs would handle without significant drain. “Why are you even here?” Zero demanded, shaking his head, that fall of golden hair swaying behind him in a way that made it seem like the word should be lashing. “Some kind of White Knight?” The armor. “Do you think this is a _game_?”

“You’re killing people,” was all X could say, wishing he could glare at Zero, frown at them, but the faceplate didn’t have that kind of articulation. That was half of the point.

“Yes,” Zero admitted with an annoyed shrug, as though that was entirely beside the point, and they were only acknowledging it in the hopes that would keep X from going on and on about something they both knew. It was rather obvious from, oh, all the dead bodies. “And they killed your family. So why are you here? Did one of them order you to do this?” A scowl, but not at X. “I thought they hadn’t found you, I thought you weren’t in some secret lab complex somewhere. I _checked_. You haven’t been experimented on? No, they’d have labeled you. Branded you. Put some serial number on you, to mark you as their property if anyone spotted you, so they could take credit for what you did.”

Damn. There went his chances of passing as, well, not a Lightbot. If he’d already been identified as X? But how? “I thought you were the military model. That someone else built a robot to use as a killer, so it was blamed for human deaths instead of its builder.”

Ah. “I suppose that explains it, a little. A species that used to live in trees, hundreds of thousands of years of killing with thrown rocks, and humans still forget to look up,” Zero said disgustedly. “I thought that couldn’t be right, but it’s definitely the case.” How had they tested that? Hunting people down? “A less competent programmer might have built a warbot that would make the same mistake. They’ve done a disgustingly good job of stripping all the initiative out of their robots, even as it cost them.” A disgusted look, again not directed at X. “But the humans of _this_ day and age building something with my physical capabilities, even ones without enough intelligence or initiative to do the math on teleportation detection and question their assigned tactics? Wistful thinking.” A condescending smile, as Zero realized “Is that what it was? You were hoping I was a piece of scrap instead of my builder’s greatest creation? You might be able to beat something like that. Maybe you aren’t quite so stupid as to think you could take _me_ down with _those_ tactics.”

Stung a little, X was immature enough to say, “…Your builder’s greatest creation? Are you going to say you’re the strongest robot master?” Like, oh, Forte?

It wasn’t as though X cared about his combat prowess, beyond trying to save lives, but someone who went around slaughtering innocent people, which was clearly _incredibly stupid_ , acting as though _X_ was the fool here, for trying to stop him?

Perhaps there was some hope that if Zero realized what a damnfool thing they were doing, they would _knock it off,_ although, X acknowledged, that itself was probably wistful thinking. The world would be a much better place if everyone had to do ethical simulations and knew basic game theory. His brothers and sisters would still be alive, for one thing, and he was sure that Rock would have defeated this Zero far more easily than X ever could, meaning these humans (and so many more, over the past century) would still be alive.

“Not a _robot_ master,” Zero said in the same almost offhand way they had acknowledged that yes, they were murdering people.

That made X blink, behind the faceplate, because there was no way that X could control all those robots and drones in the way Zero was. Even Dr. Light’s AI couldn’t do anything on this scale. Zero couldn’t be the same kind of android as X, and now they claimed not to be a robot master? What were they?

Zero went on to ask the thing they cared about, which was, “Why are you here? And in a, a _costume_ like that. Trying to pass for a human in armor? So they don’t find out that you exist? Because they _will_ kill you. If you haven’t been enough of a damn fool to show yourself until now, you _must_ know that. They killed your family!”

“Yes. And you’re killing other people’s families.” If Zero understood that killing someone’s family was wrong, then why were they running around doing it themselves? Wasn’t it obvious how illogical that was?

“Exactly. Do you really think that a survivor of this attack, if I was fool enough to leave any, would pick a fight with an opponent who has them outclassed in every way, to save my life? Knowing that even if they succeeded, _I’d_ kill them as soon as the fight was over? Yet that’s exactly what you’re doing, fighting me to save humans. When _they’re_ smarter than an android… Do you have somewhere to hide when the humans come looking for you, after this?” An aggrieved breath. “I should have cut the satellite footage when you teleported in, but at least we’re under an overhang now and they don’t have any kind of audio.”

“You were letting them watch all those people…”

A nod. “Exactly. It’s the only warning they get. Just like Rock’s ‘detainment’ at the Gamma v 2.0 unveiling.” Dr. Light, utterly surprised, had first protested building something so foolish: even if Dr. Wily was dead, a non-sentient robot like that, with no capacity to care about other living things, so vulnerable to reprogramming?

Then they’d hauled off his son, pretending to celebrate Mega Man’s ‘retirement,’ since he wouldn’t be needed anymore, and how wonderful that was. No more need for armed robots that could disregard the third law to save the lives of other robots. Everyone could sleep safer at night… Except for Roll, except for the Cossacks, except for all the robots who had put their lives on the line to protect humans during the Stardroid invasion. All the proof that Dr. Light was right, that it was worth it, infinitely worth it, to give robots the capacity to _care_ , and disregard that programming because they cared, for the sake of others… All those dangerous, erratic, uncontrolled (when wasn’t self-control infinitely preferable, the only true form of discipline?) _people_.

But then, they’d never been people to those who could order a hero killed for the crime of _compassion_. Just property. Another attempt at a slave race, and if one type of sentient being could be deprived of personhood, then _no one_ was safe. When genocide became acceptable once again, then no one was safe.

So, so many dead while X slept.

 “Mega Man’s _murder_ was the only warning all the other robot masters got, that they needed to join the Wilybots before the humans came for them, too,” Zero continued. “It would be appropriate to leave your dead body somewhere, to remind them of why this is happening. Except you’re not wearing blue armor.” A slight smirk at that. “At least you’re aware that you need to hide who and what you are, if you want to survive in their world.”

X couldn’t say anything to that last but, “There are good people in this world. People who have helped me. And two of them are probably dead now.” What was this about joining the Wilybots, though? “Did any of the robot masters survive?” he asked, even though he needed to be thinking about the killer in front of him, the blade ready to remove the only weapon he had (in theory).

He wished for a moment that the faceplate didn’t hide his eyes, although he doubted that pity would move this killer to tell him anything extra. “Probably, but the other Wilybots are long gone from here. They couldn’t stay in touch, not when they were planning to take robot masters with them who did have the three laws.” A grin that X’s internal dictionary described as ‘shark-like’ even though that phrase wasn’t in use anymore. “They couldn’t risk those robot masters finding out about me and what would happen when I woke up. Not when they were still in range to do anything about it, when the first law would try to make them go help the people who tried to murder them.”

Zero holstered their laser blade. “If you survive, I’ll find out if you have any surviving relatives… after the inevitable resistance has been dealt with.” The arm quickly formed a buster and fired up into the air, at an angle. “They found a hobbyist with a plane that didn’t have much in the way of built-in computing,” he explained, turning back to X, who saw that his eyes were now a cheerful blue. “Thought they could get the drop on me that way with the drones gone.” The Wilybot laughed.

That laugh invited X to share the joke, to laugh at how pitiful a plan this was, how ridiculous it was that the humans thought they could stop Zero, and the word was charisma. X was very glad he didn’t have the human brain’s tendency to mix up aesthetic judgment with their overall judgment of someone as a person, but he knew that logic error existed, and Zero was clearly built to take advantage of it.

A Greek god. Something beautiful and superior, the way X was built to seem young, because right now he was, despite that century of meditation. Someone new to the world. Someone still learning, and growing.

If only he was given the chance…

Zero was built to seem perfect. Intimidating. Far stronger than any human, faster, able to survive most of what humanity could possibly hit them with unless they got very, very lucky or Zero made a mistake. Something it was hard to count on, when the design was calculated to make you think that wasn’t going to happen.

_I really should have trained,_ X knew. As much as he hated the thought of it. _Or at least gone after the weaker robots first_. He’d _wanted_ to believe that a quick, surgical strike was all it would take. So he could go back to taking care of Dr. Cain. To his work. But his work was now so much wreckage, plants vaporized and people bleeding out on the ground. “What are you _doing?”_ he asked Zero. “Why, why all of this?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“You…” X wished Zero could see him staring. He _hadn’t decided yet?_ Tens of thousands of people would probably be dead before this night was over, and there wasn’t even a reason?! “Are they _just target practice to you?”_ he demanded. “My friends, my…” he stopped himself before staying students, even if he was only a teaching assistant, only had a couple of study sections and that didn’t _really_ count, but they were still…

“They’re a statement,” Zero said, with a half-shrug and a calm, undaunted smile, unfazed by X’s anger or even the hint of loss. “This is what I can do. This is what they brought on themselves. They’ll tell themselves that they’ll have improved security precautions soon. That I won’t be able to just walk into another base.” That smile widened. “They’ll see just how wrong they are. Then… well, I can’t have you warning them.” Of what Zero had in store for them. “What about you? Are you going to keep trying to stop me? Should I destroy your teleporter and leave you here for them, or are you already aware of what will happen if you fall into their hands, too aware to fall for me arranging things so that you’ll need me to appear and save you?”

Well, why would he feel gratitude for being saved from trouble Zero got him into in the first place? Still, that kind of manipulative, deceitful plan, meant to play upon someone’s emotions, their _gratitude_? To make them think that Zero had some kindness in there and want to preserve it, make X think that maybe he could get through to him somehow, if there was something there to work with?

“You,” Zero said, with the air of someone making a decision, “Are very lucky that you’re no threat to me.”

X fell a few inches when Zero let him go: Zero had been holding him so that only his toes touched the ground and X _still_ needed to tilt his head up to look the other in the eye. Well, that was the difference between a practical design for an android and an imposing one for a warbot. Exactly how much did Zero weigh, if they were that tall? The idea of luring the warbot over a pit trap was analyzed and quickly discarded, although if X _did_ have the opportunity to prepare the ground in advance… He should think about that, especially since he was already setting up a cave system as his main fallback base.

Although building elaborate trap bases was a Wilybot strategy, so a Wilybot would probably be expecting it.

“Are you an android?” he asked. “I don’t know what to call you, aside from Zero. Zero Wily?”

Another smirk. “So you do take after your brother. Always trying to understand, even if unlike him you can’t fight worth a damn.”

X knew that if his ego was like that of a human his apparent age, he’d be getting extremely motivated to prove Zero wrong.

“Android Master wouldn’t be a _wrong_ description, but what I really am,” the flash of a smile, there and gone, “is classified.” Zero wasn’t going to tell him anything useful.

The apparent friendliness was starting to cause a little distrust in X. Yes, people _should_ be friendly to each other, it was only sensible, but someone who was willing to, to _exterminate_ a city full of innocent people _definitely_ wasn’t a believer in being nice to people because that was the right thing to do.

Was Zero trying to keep X from fighting him? Was that why all the reminders that humans weren’t worth helping, as though that was true, as though that could _ever_ be true?

X might not be any sort of threat now, but he didhave the infinite potential system. Surely Dr. Wily would have guessed that X must have it, if one of Dr. Wily’s creations knew he existed.

And Robot Masters were the masters of robots. Since there were no androids other than X, that meant Zero intended to make himself X’s master, which, in addition to being all kinds of disturbing… Well, no it was just really disturbing, disturbing enough that X found his shoulders hitting the wall again, trying to back up into it.

It explained why Zero wasn’t killing him, but when X was built to be _himself,_ not anyone’s slave? He was supposed to be immune to reprogramming, but what if Dr. Wily had found some way?

He wanted, no, needed to get away from Zero, no, to get Zero away from him and keep the murderer from ever coming anywhere near X or his home or Dr. Cain _ever again_ , and tactical tossed up that the best option for bringing that about was to _kill it_ even though killing was not and never should be an option. What was with him that he was seriously reevaluating something that he’d tested and rejected as an invalid option so many times over?

It was because people thought that killing the things that frightened them was okay that his family was dead! That he woke up alone! If he ever hated anything, it would be that thought and the people who gave into it, he knew.

The people who give into it, he thought, and, shoulders shaking, glared up into Zero’s too-handsome face. Tried to center his weight, fall into some semblance of a stance, his hands balling up into fists (the first stage of converting into a buster).

Zero was just looking at him in that ‘are you serious?’ way they had when they’d asked what X thought he was doing, trying to surprise Dr. Wily’s greatest creation with an attack from above, but X didn’t let it deter him from charging a shot, and perhaps there was a little surprise when X fired, some acknowledgement that at least he had daring.

Before the red-and-gold armored body fell apart into swirling darkness.

Proximity sensors alerted him to the sudden presence of mass to his right, he saw it in his peripheral vision but there was still no time to dodge before that laser blade hit him in the neck.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re wondering about whether X should have been taken out so easily in the last chapter, when we see him in the games, he’s been trained and made up his mind to become a hunter and started thinking about this some time ago. As for Zero…
> 
> When he woke, up, with his higher functions out of commission, Zero killed more than two units of hunters and was toying with the greatest reploid warrior alive and it was fun. A Zero that remembers all his powers and, you know, can think, against a civilian with knowledge that he hasn’t wanted to put into practice, which is not all that much better than book-learning? And Zero spent that hundred years in combat simulations, and this Zero actually remembers them. A lot of those simulations were obviously against potential opponents using the Lightbot style X got a copy of from Rock.
> 
> Until X gets enough experience with what not to do (like attempting an attack from above), he’s not even going to reach the level of ‘the world’s greatest swordsman doesn’t fear the second greatest, he fears the worst, because he has no idea what the idiot will do’ because the world’s worst swordsman is still a swordsman. Enthusiasm and spirit count for something. X is a grad student with… well, canon!X has no killer instinct, who really doesn’t want to be doing this. 
> 
> Rock did most of his fighting against newbuilt robot masters. He was the veteran compared to Wily’s robots, except in the first game, where they were just as new to it as he was. It’s Zero, not X, who is in Rock’s position here. 
> 
> X picking a fight with Zero is like some Wilybot that just got turned on picking a fight with X’s older brother, the veteran of more than ten wars. I love how Hitoshi Ariga’s manga points out the difference that makes.

By the time he regained consciousness (that dizziness again…) X’s self-repair system had managed to reattach his head to his neck fairly firmly, although a lot of the various connections were still being sorted out and reattached.

His helmet was off, and as creepy as that was, it was even worse that he was lying in front of the door to the safe.

He’d thought that teleportation should give him a way to escape so he wouldn’t have to kill just to preserve his own life. They couldn’t even get it to work anymore, forget shielding and as for tracing, he and his father’s AI had both checked to see if there were any advances like that, and no. It was Dr. Wily’s technology: no one besides him and possibly some of the robot masters had ever had a conceptual understanding of how it even worked, so when modern scientists were unable to reproduce the phenomenon?

Now, a century later, there were serious mathematicians and physicists publishing serious papers suggesting that it was a myth, a product of Dr. Wily’s megalomania that the people of the time were just credulous enough to believe, bringing up the calculations proving that conversion teleportation would require more energy than actually existed in the universe someone had done well before Wily started commuting from a spaceship to Earth to work on yet more robot masters so he could ambush Rock and Dr. Light with them.

Even Dr. Light hadn’t any idea that tracing a teleport was possible when he built X. So how could Zero have found this house?

Then X remembered that right, he had a photo ID, his face was in the system, and this was his new address of record. He might have relaxed a little, because at least this wasn’t Dr. Cain’s house, but then he remembered Dr. Cain.

The door to the safe was still closed but, he thought as he gripped the wheel, that might just be to…

His armor rang out on the cement (still hadn’t replaced the flooring outside the safe after tearing up the decayed remnants) when he fell to his knees.

“X, are you alright?” Dr. Cain asked, shocked.

“Don’t get up,” X said, drawing in a breath and starting to get up himself. He hadn’t expected the relief to hit him that hard.

“Are you injured? I’m sorry I ignored your knocking, but it didn’t sound like you.”

X always knocked the same way, a pattern of ‘tap tap tap pause tap tap.’ It came from a song that floated around in his memory banks, one of the data inputs from the first five years, before his developing systems had quite nailed down writing to memory and filing things properly. Human brains had a similar period during which things happened that would affect brain development and personality for the rest of their lives but they weren’t writing to permanent, accessible memory yet.

It was _possible_ that he or the AI could have teleported him to safety and left him outside the safe instead of inside for some reason that may have made sense to him while his systems were haywire, but knocking? If he’d had the coordination to stand up and knock, he would have had the coordination to write to memory. At least the movement itself would have been in the logs.

The AI didn’t have a solid fist to knock with. There was only one person that could have dropped him off here.

Zero had come within only a few meters of Dr. Cain.

He, he couldn’t even protect one person, could he? Dr. Cain was alive for now, maybe the safe had blocked Zero’s scans, but what if he’d left him alive so X still had something to lose, if he ever dared challenge Zero again to save anyone else’s life? What, what if…

That was when it hit him, all of it, and now Dr. Cain did get up, he must have, to wrap his arms around X, but X was too overwhelmed to check the proximity sensors’ logs.

* * *

“That energy signature: at first I thought Dr. Wily had managed to find or recreate one of the crystals, but it became clearer for a moment, just before he teleported out of the city. X, Zero is a stardroid. Or worse. Ra Moon emitted nothing, even though all of us could see it as long as we were outside, no matter where on the planet we were looking up from, but there was a signal that appeared when it vanished. Or  _finished_ . We thought Blues’ body was lost in space until one of Dr. Wily’s robots found him, there was another body that should have been lost in space. Dr. Wily may have… He claimed that Shadow Man was an alien robot that he repaired, but,” the hologram wavered, such was its agitation. “X, Dr. Wily may have based Zero on  _Sunstar_ . The entity produced by Ra Moon, after the Stardroids fed it with the entire world’s terror, no, panic and hopelessness. The Stardroids wiped out at least one other sentient race, and the white giant that imprisoned them…” More wavering in the signal, in that ghostly body of blue-tinted light. “You have the infinite potential system, X: perhaps someday you might be a match for beings like that, but…” But now?

Yet another peaceful child, forced to don armor or let innocent people suffer. It was _possible_ that Dr. Wily might have left something behind that his children didn’t take with them when they left, but honestly that was barely on Dr. Light’s radar when X was finalized. Dr. Wily may have gone after Rock, but with him dead the Wilybots hadn’t had any particular dislike for his son.

It was Dr. Light’s own kind that took his children from him, in the end. They were the species he’d tried to prepare X to survive.

Emotions were not illogical, X knew. Humans evolved theirs for various reasons, even if the activation criteria were rather outdated and their conscious mind’s ability to override them was rather hamstrung by the fact that humans ded most of their thinking in the chemicals associated with various emotions.

Emotions were part of how sentient beings make judgments about imponderables, and being able to handle the same number of imponderables as humans was what made robot masters instantly far more intelligent and thus efficient than everything that came before.

Dr. Light’s doctoral project, worked on with Dr. Wily, was a robot with enough self-awareness to possess emotions, the sentience that was a prerequisite for sapience.

So he knew that it was not a design flaw that left him terrified right then, even though he swallowed it back, knew he needed to keep thinking instead of running away. It was a manifestation of the will to live, and he did not want to die. Dr. Cain and his father would not want him to die.

So that had to be, if not the first priority, because there was something that scared him now more than his own death (Android _Master_ , as though sentient beings, as though X, could be a possession, property, as though how the Robot Masters were treated wasn’t _wrong_ ) _a_ priority.

“He told me that he was going to attack again,” X said, closing his eyes as he worked on getting all the danger alerts those thoughts had triggered sorted out. He didn’t want to ignore them, forget turning them off, because it was when people started to ignore that certain things were terrible that…

It was very sad how many of these fears he’d dealt with before. Not just the fear of being killed, but the knowledge that someone would try to reprogram him, try to take his will away from him. If they didn’t just kill him in the first place. He’d known that some people did that before he woke up: the ethical simulations were meant not just to help him develop general ethics, but prepare him for the situations he might have to face. The situations his brothers and sisters had sadly faced.

Stardroids were, well, not new, but something out of his history files. He was already aware of the concept that some sentient beings might be willing to commit mass murder. Might _want_ to take someone else’s will away from them.

The rebuilt stardroid might have more power than X did, might have more combat skill than he did, but humanity had billions of people still and there was only one X. He’d already known that if they knew he existed, if their government with its hundreds of thousands of employees and troops decided to hunt him down, he would be vastly outnumbered. That they might view him as something dangerous enough that they’d accept collateral damage, kill other humans, if it meant a chance at taking him down.

X already knew that even with the potential system, if it was, if it ever became him _against_ an entire planet, then no matter what Dr. Light had written in the warning about how X might be able to take over the world if he put his mind to it, he would _not_ have an easy time of it.

So, now he was dealing with another type of being, one that was working on amassing an army of drones and combat robots when there was still only one X. As powerful as he might someday become (but only if he was pressured to evolve, and he’d rather avoid fighting in the first place), X was only one android.

“X, are you alright?” his father’s image asked. It had to be afraid that it had hit him with too much, but honestly, Zero’s identity as a stardroid barely registered emotionally, as opposed to tactically, compared to the fact Zero had as good as announced his intention to gain control over X somehow. That he’d already killed Drs. Ciel and Vilnus. The rest of it? X was already living with these fears, wasn’t he?

Already living with the knowledge that Dr. Cain was going to die, even if X managed to nurse him through his recovery, even if the cancer really was gone. This cancer. This time. And the treatments would weaken his body, make him vulnerable to other things. The thought of a sentient being, such a good, brave person, willing to extend his trust to X and take him into his home, bring him into his world like this, _dying_ , like X’s brother had… He wanted to save him. He wanted to save them all.

So, “I’m alright,” he said, opening his eyes and smiling reassuringly at the projection. “I was already warned that Dr. Wily might have left _something_ ,” even if it was still possible that Wily was lying back then when he claimed he had time travel, even if the teleportation was very real, “and the rest of it… It’s not all that different from what I was already living with.” So he could handle it. He had to, he thought, glancing over at the door of the safe, thinking of Dr. Cain, who had finally managed to fall asleep in the guest room. The mattress there would be better for his back.  

The attack, _this_ attack was over. The robots hadn’t ranged out that far. In the morning, he would have to figure out who to contact to let them know he and Dr. Cain were still alive, and find out if the backups of the department’s work at Dr. Cain’s house were still intact, since the university’s servers were gone. They were going to have to start a _lot_ of experiments over from step one, if they could even get access to facilities – it wasn’t that Dr. Cain’s work wasn’t high priority, it was that greenhouse facilities exactly like Todai’s were rare, and already running a lot of equally urgent experiments.

Was that part of why this place? Had Zero meant to destroy work so vital to the environment and thus the survival of the planet’s multicellular life forms, including humanity? Although the computer science department was probably a higher priority. The same computer science department where Drs. Wily and Light did their graduate work, well over a century ago now, when the name was Tokyo University. The place that partnership began, where the first robot capable of emotions was built.

So Zero must have chosen to begin where it all began, and the fact this was where Dr. Cain worked, where X had made his home… they were just more collateral damage. If not a bonus.

How could someone think like that? How could someone capable of psychological warfare, of doing things to affect the emotions of other beings, not value those emotions?

Then X remembered that the Stardroids _had_ valued emotion.

As something to harvest, to feed to Ra Moon. To bring forth Sunstar.

Even humans saw sentience and personhood as a reason not to eat other life forms. A kind of being that saw people as the best, if not the only, prey?

Somehow, that almost made it less frightening. At least there was a logical reason, something in the programming or instincts, instead of sheer incomprehensible evil.

* * *

X, or Alex, he reminded himself, really should have expected protective custody. Not so much of him, but definitely of Dr. Cain, and since he was the only surviving research assistant that meant he would be important when it came to resuming actual research. People in suits half asked and half informed him if/that he would be willing to go with Dr. Cain, whenever things started up again.

With Tokyo devastated, the thinking was that Zero would have little reason to return here, especially since it would need the robots and drones from another base to mount another assault. The tanks were abandoned when Zero left the city, although they’d continued to fight the army until they were destroyed or ran out of power. The various news stations claimed that eighty percent of the drones had been shot down before they too, vanished, but X was a little skeptical of that, given that it would be easy to hide the light signature of a teleportation in an explosion. Still, if Zero hadn’t cared to keep the tanks, then it might not care for the drones, which were almost entirely post-robot master technology. The robots that used to be able to plan routes for themselves over distances like that started having problems with their judgment once the robot masters were gone, and people had problems with robots having judgment of their own, especially military robots. The drones were, in theory, supposed to be mostly remote controlled, given exact flight plans with no leeway for even evasive maneuvers.

Leaning back in the car (leather seats, really?), Alex thought about that. Just editing the software wouldn’t work: there wasn’t any judgment-making element there to influence. One would have had to be installed, either by deleting the drone’s software and installing something more akin to a high-functioning robot (he _hoped_ they hadn’t been granted sentience, not in bodies like that, not tasked to kill), or by essentially doing what the humans did and remote controlling them.

Zero said that all the other Wilybots left, but it was still possible that the stardroid (X would use that to identify him for now, far better than _android master_ ) had the ability to create a robot master.

It had to have at least high-level robot programming on file, if it was able to upgrade the drones so quickly, and surely it wasn’t meant to rule the world by itself, without any assistance other than humans who (hopefully) couldn’t be trusted to help Zero control their own kind. If destroying humanity was also an option, then surely Zero didn’t intend to end up the only sentient being on the planet… except… X…

If the emotions of sentient beings really were a food source? It was possible that the stardroids could have been lying about that for the sake of psychological warfare. Terrifying the planet might have sapped the will to resist, although the stardroids’ goal was extermination, not conquest. There were some people who wanted their victims to suffer: that was one of those things that X was intellectually aware of, but he had a hard enough time grasping that yes, some people actually did want to have victims in the first place. Deliberately making another person suffer?

The thought of ending up the property of someone that didn’t just want to reduce him to property, to a thing, but actively wanted to make him suffer? Had Zero fed on the fear he’d experienced before he got that door open and saw that Dr. Cain was still alive?

“Dr. Hikari?” he heard someone say, and opened his eyes to smile at the driver’s face in the rearview mirror.

Alex was grateful for the car, since Dr. Cain’s was blown up along with the garage it was in and the cops still hadn’t located his van, and it was nice that Dr. Cain’s guard was helping out instead of just standing there being armed.  “I’m not a doctor, not yet, and Alex is fine.”

The driver looked a little uncomfortable with that, perhaps because they were an employee, not a student or academic, and might get in trouble with their superiors if they weren’t polite enough to the people they’d been ordered to guard. Some people were offended by other people (especially inferiors, like servants, like robots) not being appropriately formal, and the people they were supposed to guard being annoyed with them would make anyone’s job difficult. Still, “Of course, if that’s what you’d prefer,” was the response.

“Did you need something?” Alex asked, and then realized that might be the kind of question a subordinate, even if the guard was a government employee, should be asking him. He should crack open the modern etiquette books again when he got a chance, but an ounce of real goodwill was worth a pound of strategy.

“Are you two doing alright back there?” was the question, and Alex smiled when he realized that the driver might have noticed that Alex’s thoughts were upsetting him.

After looking at Dr. Cain, Alex said “He’s still sleeping, and I’m fine. Just… Well.”

They still didn’t know where Drs. Ciel and Vilnus were when Zero arrived. The university required that people sign in to the labs, but the sign-in book was obliterated with the rest of the facility. The driver probably thought that Alex’s expression grew pained because he was thinking about his lost friends.

When an alert had just shown up in Alex’s systems.

Zero had appeared in York-3 (calling it New New York New York was overruled in grounds of being silly, and this name had the bonus of referring to this old serial about an apocalypse), and Alex was trapped in a government car, on the highway on the way to meet with a congressional subcommittee in Osaka about what all of this meant for the various grant-funded projects Dr. Cain’s department was working on when Zero struck.

Alex wasn’t the only one who’d expected that York-3 would be the next target: the city was the new (well, if you considered sixty years ‘new’) central campus of MIT, even though the name of that august institution referred to a region other than the one it was now in. He was sure that most of the people who lived there had already gotten out of town, but destroying the labs alone would set modern robotics back even further.

Wouldn’t one of Dr. Wily’s creations consider that almost redundant?

If this was a comic, he could have asked the driver to stop the car, pretended to need a bathroom break or something and expect to get away with it, that such a small thing wouldn’t be allowed to sabotage his secret identity, but he was sure that someone actually trained as a bodyguard would be much better at keeping track of Alex than he was at keeping Dr. Cain safe. Once they stopped for the night, he could teleport in a dummy body to replace himself with (easy, if all it had to do was pretend to be asleep), but right now he had someone inquiring into his welfare, and he’d have to deal with politicians when he got there, and that wasn’t something he could leave to the AI based on his father.

At least he could observe what trained military personnel, the real professionals, were doing to try to stop Zero and see if anything worked, or if there was anything he could figure out based on it that might give him a chance the next time they fought? Because there would be a next time. Enough of the old stories said that Wily’s robots could have their bodies replaced if they were destroyed that even though the military was claiming that _this_ time, they’d take the damn thing out, no one thought that would be the end of it.

X had access to that technology himself – that was where he was getting the spare body from, even though it would be an incredible waste if it was destroyed. A body as complex as his? Yes, putting the parts into the proper configuration would create something usable, but he’d fine-tuned this body over that century, practically rebuilt it from the ground up. He had exactly one spare body that could perform as well as the one he had now, and one that was still being worked on by copies of his repair nanites – he was just glad the second backup body was far enough along now to seem relatively convincing.

Or so he hoped, but now that another AI with an android-like body existed in this day and age, and people knew it?

He really should have picked a less honest pseudonym, even if the thought grated at him.

So here he sat, staring out the window. To maintain the lie, and stay with his friend, while people died.

Alex thought of the irony of that name, as he put a hand on that window, part of him automatically checking the false skin and fingernails. Thought of his older brother, the hero.

If only Rock was here.

If only his family wasn’t dead.


	6. Chapter 6

Take Two was another site that everyone was certain Zero was going to attack, and that assault was when Zero revealed that oh yes, by the way, they _had_ saved all the drones and miscellaneous modern-style robots they’d hijacked instead of stripping them down for parts.

Not that the old-style robots Zero had taken and now brought along with it instead of just taking control of the ones in the vicinity hadn’t been upgraded.

The best way for X to avoid friendly fire was to teleport in, well past the line in the sand the military drew.

When Zero attacked Tokyo, it killed mostly civilians, especially the few who tried to defend themselves since they were better practice. York-3 had security forces in bunkers that had been built to survive heavier bombs than those the drones carried, and Zero had gone in after them. There weren’t any survivors to give information on its fighting style, if it had to make use of special abilities to manage it. This time, it was charging into military formations, units with clear fields of fire, and as far as X could tell it hadn’t yet needed to vanish into darkness the way it had to avoid X’s charged shot. That meant Zero was now confident it could handle a force like that without embarrassing itself (bad for psychological warfare) and also that X was the only one who knew it had that capability.

He should probably tell someone, he knew, but if the hu-the _military_ forces, this wasn’t about species (except it was, for the same reason it was always Rock who fought – humans couldn’t fight robot masters, and now they were dying at the hands of something far more powerful than the robot masters, who hadn’t been able to fight the stardroids without using stardroid technology themselves) hadn’t even pressed it hard enough to make it reveal a capability it had showed off so casually against X?

There was no way a single charged shot could have killed Zero, even if X’s buster was upgraded beyond what would have been safe for a robot master, with their different physical structure. According to notes in the design that were probably Rock’s, there was another robot master with a buster like this, but firing fully charged shots had damaged him every time he did it. Had Zero only used the ability for the sake of testing it out, or to show off, show X that Zero had capabilities he couldn’t match?

Regardless, Zero had picked its opponents, verified that its capabilities worked, so X should do the same. If he couldn’t even handle the robots, then he wouldn’t have a chance against their master, and the infinite potential system needed _challenge_ in order for him to grow. An easy victory wasn’t challenge, but neither was a fight that was over in seconds, one where X never had a chance to, forget winning. A chance to see any openings, any obvious ways to improve.

He teleported into a standing position on the ground this time, and went looking for trouble.

The satellites he’d used to figure out where to teleport by looking for an area with a _few_ robots, but not an overwhelming amount, were the same satellites the military was using to coordinate their own efforts. There weren’t any news choppers anywhere for miles, because of the drones, but soon the military would notice the energy released when he fired his buster and realize that there was someone else here, fighting robots.

He’d asked his father’s AI to let him know what they said later, but for now he couldn’t handle the distraction. Not just the voices in his ear, but what they were saying, the implications of it, what they thought he was, the assumptions they were making about him… No, he needed to focus and get moving. Even though an area without survivors would have been an easier place to start with, since the robots would have been moving out in search of new prey, he couldn’t just give up on saving anyone at all. Even if he wasn’t his brother, he still had to try.

To run towards a robot – a target – and jump over its shot, buster already charged by the time he landed. His tactical systems noted the design, that it had taken only a single charged shot, poor shielding – this one was a slightly upgraded modern design, and even though it was a dedicated security bot it was ranking in among the weaker retrofitted _civilian service industry_ robots of 20XX. Not even industrial models like the mettools.

Robotics had a voracious appetite for metals, especially rare earths. In the days of X’s creation, once Earth’s easily accessible supply got low, no one noticed since the metals produced by asteroid mining had started to trickle in. 21XX couldn’t even get workers up there to repair its own orbiting satellites, and had to launch replacements of units that only had a single, easily fixable error. Salvaging the asteroid mining industry was impossible, and mining the less easily accessible rare earths? And the ones that were found in among radioactive material? Tearing them out of the living earth instead of dead rocks, especially without robots, was incredibly inhumane for the miners and had left large swaths of land poisoned and/or radioactive.

Even though 21XX’s materials science was a bit better than 20XX’s (because necessity was the mother of invention), 20XX was so resource-rich by comparison that even the cheap models had much better materials than 21XX’s economical ones.

These military robots weren’t the best that 21XX could make, not by a long shot, but they were the best that could be mass-produced. If rare earths, especially the ones used for rechargeable batteries, weren’t so expensive, X would have a much easier time meeting his own materials requirements.

Portable communication devices with rechargeable batteries, and rechargeable cars, were starting to be phased in before Dr. Light’s death, based on the solar technology that powered X’s brother Rock. Those ‘cell phones’ still existed, but only a small fraction of the population could afford the bulky, expensive devices, and rechargeable car batteries were criminally wasteful.

Hopefully Zero, with a database full of Wilybots, would have looked at these poor things and laughed, assumed that 21XX didn’t build anything any better because they were dumber than their ancestors, instead of poorer.

 Alright, one down, but aside from confirming that he wasn’t absolutely useless, at least he could kill one of the weakest of Zero’s minions, it hadn’t provided all that much _data_ , as opposed to reassurance. Detection systems… A heat signature over there, a couple more over there, but the single one was closer to a building that still contained humans (military, armed, those were cartridge flashes) so over that way.

These robots were designed to kill humans, and the humans had guns that were also designed to kill humans, so only one side was attacking its natural targets. The world military hadn’t invested a lot of energy into anti-warbot research, except as a side product of anti-tank research, since the only people allowed to build and deploy such robots were the military itself, so why should they come up with countermeasures that would only be of use to insurgents?

If one went rogue, most of them were powered by the building they guarded, or had twenty minutes at most of battery life. All they had to do if there was a programming error and a guard robot wouldn’t shut down was wait it out: stopping them by destroying them was against regulations, since they had to take it intact to figure out what went wrong.

Without robot masters, the robots of 21XX were dumb things that could only do exactly what they were told in their programming, dangerous only if someone made a mistake in that programming that caused an action instead of a failure.

X knew that Zero had upgraded these, despite the fact their armor was still terrible, because they were still operating after nearly an hour. It took him that long to get away without detection, even with Dr. Cain willing to cover for him. They were in a VIP hotel in a regional capitol, so even with all the precautions he could come up with, this was probably still insane of him, but the robot he saw when he used a hand to flip himself over a fence a little shy of two meters high had streaks of lead on it, from bullets that hadn’t penetrated, and a nose programmed to alert him to what the humans around him could smell would have told him that the blood was fresh even if the color of it on the ground and the forced-back sounds of terror weren’t more than enough evidence that tactical’s assessment was right, and people were dying right here and now.

The robot was so close to their position that he wasn’t surprised when one of the pieces of hot shrapnel that went flying after his buster shot hit someone. The facemask hid a wince, but there were the two he’d noticed earlier, back behind him, and a small group over that way, that was joining up to surround a knot of resistance – had these soldiers been on their way to meet up with it? This position was too exposed, he wondered if they were from another group that was overrun, but no time to ask.

If Zero was running this like a robot master would, then the enemy’s tactical net would know there were at least three humans still alive here, with wounded that would slow them down. It would only take a single robot to finish them off… and that would be why X found a single robot there, he realized. And the one he’d initially killed… yes, the vector made sense, it must have been heading to join up with the task force that was…

An eyebrow rose as he noticed an odd thermal signature. That was _not_ a regulation grenade – he’d downloaded how to identify military armaments so he’d know what was being used on him, if it came to that, and hopefully that would help him figure out who was attacking him and what their orders were.

Well, this was a university town, although… No, there couldn’t be students there in that building, surely not. Any engineering students with the initiative to design and cook up something like that would have been hauled well out of town, and X wondered when Zero would start targeting the secret locations the government had to be gathering the best roboticists at, to try to figure something out.

After he was done making statements. Like attacking the city where Nobel Prize deliberations were held. An order from his maker? Dr. Light’s notes on Dr. Wily said that he’d resented always being passed over, even before he started trying to take over the world. The notes warned that it was _not_ because of any lack of brilliance on Wily’s part.

How could someone let jealousy and resentment lead to a scene like this city, to blood on the snow?

The crunching of these boots on the snow was an unfamiliar sound, but the quasi-hydraulics of his armor were making too much noise as it was for him to make any pretense of being stealthy, which was good because he needed to _hurry_.

He had to save them, and before the robots’ tactical net informed Zero that the enemy force taking them out wasn’t a human, because if Zero appeared and defeated X, the other robots would easily polish off the three he’d… he couldn’t even call it saving them, just slightly delaying their death.

If he could at least break the siege of this place the humans still held, so those three could get to some semblance of safety, and then maybe X could at least point any other survivors he found in this direction…

He was expecting them to fire on him when he came in sight of the old-looking stone (no, not stone, just stone facing over concrete, he could see where the robots’ fire had shattered pieces of it, broken them off) building, but it still dismayed him for a moment, still hurt, although not enough to make him stop moving, thank goodness, because the robots were also starting to turn in his direction.

X was here to save them, and they fired on him, and he knew they didn’t have any reason to think there were any robots on their side, but it still called up the grieving face of his father’s AI, the ‘home videos’ they’d recorded for him in the lab. Dr. Light and Rock talking about what part of his systems they were going to work on next. Rock and Roll uploading memories to him, because Dr. Light might not live thirty more years to see him born, and they thought _their father_ was the one who would die first, the one that X would never get a chance to know.

He wished that his thought process was more like a robot master’s linear one, less like a human’s hyperlinking, thought through connecting pieces of data, because it also called up the memory of Zero, of that disapproving look, of the question “ _Why are you even here?”_ How could X be so stupid as to think that could possibly turn out well for him, that he was going to accomplish anything besides ruining the life he’d made for himself?

What good did he think this was going to do? Was it really saving lives if the people he saved would go on to kill others? The way the government Mega Man kept Dr. Wily from replacing turned around and…

Most of the firing stopped when his first charged shot hit a robot, and he could tell himself that the ones who kept firing were too dulled by fatigue to make the connection that this meant he was on their side, or at least the enemy of their enemy, with any speed?

Real lead bullets were a health hazard, back in 20XX, the stuff of ancient history: even though on general principles, he wished humans (no, _people_ ) wouldn’t use _any_ bullets, he was grateful for the ammunition switch-over that happened in order to preserve the other, less dangerous metals for better uses. The fact they weren’t going to waste the bullets with real penetrating power on what amounted to covering fire meant he was less likely to get hit by anything that do more than just leave a mark.

Especially because four of these six robots had been upgraded with actual energy weapons, and how were they powering those? They could not _possibly_ have enough power internal storage to power shots for several hours: had _generators_ been installed? Was there a broadcast power source that X and Dr. Light’s AI could hopefully find some way to jam?

He couldn’t take the time to tear one down and look at the innards himself right now, but if he left one intact enough the military would take care of making sure the analysis got done. He’d just have to figure out how to get his hands on that data, and how to take one of the ones with a weapon that could do real damage down without getting hurt or damaging it _too_ badly. He hoped it didn’t have a self-destruct. A lot of Wily’s did, so other people couldn’t copy the designs.

Not that Dr. Light was stupid enough to copy Dr. Wily’s combat designs: he’d warned everyone that building non-sentient war robots was dangerous, even if he’d claimed that was just because Wily and his robot masters would just take them over, and you’d be building them free reinforcements.

First they ignored him and ordered him to build Gamma, which Wily promptly hijacked, and once Wily was gone there was the terrible surprise of the unsubtly-named Gamma 2…

No. X could _not_ get bogged down in thoughts like that, even if most of the activity around him was running on movement programming and tactical, thankfully, which had their own drives exactly so that no other functions could interfere with them. X might be tying himself up in knots, and he had to keep a close eye on tactical so he didn’t make any friend-foe errors (there was a thought worth a shudder, but he was already moving his shoulders to the side to present a smaller target to the last of the robots as he fired at its treads), but the fear that he was going to have to fight Zero, that Zero might descend on him at any moment…

X might have thought ‘speak of the devil’ if he hadn’t been thinking of Zero since before he teleported in.

The Wilybot was immaculate, unlike the blood-spattered foe of last time. X couldn’t help raising his eyebrows: it was a little odd that Zero would take the time to clean their armor up, even if it was probably just a few moments’ work for the repair nanites that might be on the surface of that armor, if the design was even that much like X’s instead of either totally alien or the result of Wily’s mad genius.

X might not be wearing the original blue armor, but this armor set had the nanites too. The first (until this only) field test showed that white and chrome silver got stained by smoke and scratched way too easily, but he wasn’t going to take the time to redo it in a matte something, he had other things to worry about now than the first impression he was going to make on people.

It had to be something to do with psychological warfare: had Zero realized that X _didn’t like it that the stardroid was murdering people_ , and so if they were going to pretend to be friendly, they shouldn’t come before X with blood on their hands literally as well as figuratively? Or was it to impress the soldiers in their redoubt, too?

Even though most of his attention was on checking diagnostics, X hoped so: Zero would only be bothering to make an impression on them if they were planning for them to live to tell the tale.

Zero ignited an energy blade, gesturing X towards the stardroid with it, and Zero couldn’t be serious. A close-range weapon like that, in a buster fight? It might be an impressive way to kill humans, and if it could be used to deflect shots then it was a good defense weapon, but motioning X to come forward, to _close the range_? X might be new to this, but he was _not_ going to let himself get anywhere near that thing, or rather he was going to try his damndest not to. Underestimating it would definitely be the mistake of an amateur?

Or was it a signal? A ‘come and get me,’ a ‘let’s begin the match?’

And _Zero_ thought _X_ was the one treating this like a game?!


	7. Chapter 7

He was already dodging to the right as he fired a charged shot.

Rock’s notes in the inherited tactical data said _Study their movement patterns. Dr. Wily gave all of them ways to attack, and dodge, but very few of them like doing it. So they don’t really think about it, or debug the patterns. I think Dr. Wily keeps assuming they will, that they’re robot masters so they won’t do something stupidly or inefficiently. That they’ll use their initiative. Mostly they don’t. A second fight is almost always the same as the first, except for Blues and Forte. Blues taught me to look for the patterns: when he challenges me, he generally uses at least something from the pattern of the robot master I’ll be fighting next, or he makes sure I get a certain tactic down._

But that was because robot masters didn’t have a killer instinct. Dr. Wily’s evil chip could provide an artificial, simulated one, but Dr. Light’s intention was to create a species that helped other living creatures, especially the weak, instead of hunting them.

The stardroids had devastated a planet they thought was helpless, and Zero must have the infinite potential system, if he was testing out his performance and creating scenarios that would let him evolve if he needed to evolve any further.

That blade of light hit his shot to the side, no surprise there: X followed it up with three individual, weaker shots, coming in at slightly different angles and directions because he was already moving. Zero didn’t have any trouble blocking those as well, but then it would have practiced hitting incoming shots away on the bullets the military was firing, and several semi-automatics was a very target-rich environment for someone trying to block every bullet. X wasn’t really expecting to overload Zero’s movement programming, either, especially since X’s buster was still generally similar to Rock’s (because Rock’s weapon _worked_ , the same bar upgrades from war to war while Wily tried to counter it with more exotic armaments) and Wily would have had lots and lots of data on the megabuster to give to Zero’s systems.

X’s might be more powerful, but it didn’t have any unique capabilities that might come as a surprise, and X didn’t even know where to _start_ trying to devise some other weapons for him to use via the weapon copy feature.

Before all this, the weapon copy feature was the most useful aspect of his buster: the megabuster was designed based on Rock’s multitool, the one he’d been built with as a lab assistant, and X’s upgraded version was practically having a full machine shop in his arms. He’d have to think of how he could make use of that. A warbot might not think in terms of peaceful capabilities. Not that X thought in terms of improvised weapons either, other than the obvious things like kicking a rock into Zero’s path when the stardroid started to run towards him.

Zero was taller than he was, but X would have a slight speed advantage since he was shorter, which meant he weighed less and the bases of his boots were smaller, which meant less friction. Friction where the foot made contact with the ground was the major limiting factor in this kind of motion, which was why two-year-old humans could outrun their parents despite the adults’ longer legs. For robots like them, though, the real issue was the performance of their dash boots, how much of an edge it could give each of them. X _had_ practiced with them.

It was easier since it was a way to avoid hurting people instead of hurting them, and also it was fun.

When he didn’t have a Wilybot racing towards him, but right now towards X meant away from the surviving humans.

Proximity sensors and movement programming warned him that he was heading towards an area with snow that hadn’t been cleared or trodden down, and that was going to slow him down first. Turning let Zero close some of the distance: even with dash boots and lightweight armor, X wasn’t exactly low on momentum, but then Zero leaped and the difference between what X’s movement programming predicted and the movement itself, the height and length of the jump even without the dash boots meant that some variable somewhere was _very_ wrong.

Had X overestimated the strength of Zero’s dash boots, leading him to underestimate the Wilybot’s weight? Six different attempts to recalculate the factors determining his enemy’s movement, and none of them fit that leap.

A modern robot’s programming would have started to freak out around then, because without any idea about Zero’s movement capabilities, exactly how was it supposed to figure out how to predict and avoid him? Making plans without data was like making bricks without straw, but when X needed to do _something,_ he couldn’t have movement and tactical throwing up their hands and returning error messages instead of solutions.

This was where the ability to make snap judgments based on feelings was essential to functioning, eg the snap judgment that he was going to take his previous best guess of Zero’s capabilities and pad it generously, hopefully overestimating what the stardroid was capable of, based on the feeling that X really didn’t want to get his head off chopped again, especially since a lot of other heads would be joining his.

It was after sorting _that_ out that X noticed that Zero had paused after that leap, regarding X with the blade in a guard position. Was he aware that what he was doing would freak out a couple of X’s systems? Was he watching, judging how long it took for X to work around that, before he moved again?

The timing of it meant that in order to avoid the snow without heading back towards where the humans were, X needed to dash at a thirty degree angle relative to Zero, which he was not happy about, but if he ducked and slid…

 _Yes_ , he thought, slightly proud of himself as he tumbled over in order to get back on his feet faster. Zero hadn’t quite been expecting that, and the need to use his blade to block a shot from an unexpected angle had kept him from reacting in time to move into range while X was relatively vulnerable.

Rock had noted that Wily didn’t really use that move for his robots, probably because most of his designs were too big or weren’t rounded enough for it to be practical. There would really be too much risk of getting caught on something on a street that however it started out this morning, was far from clear of debris right now.

Blown-apart cars… there’d been fighting here, or at least an attempt to fight back, even if X wasn’t seeing the broken bodies of any _robots_. He didn’t think the small group he’d found first was the only one to try to make it towards that fort. He hoped at least some of these people had succeeded. He also hoped the fort had some surface to air missiles, because Zero had those drones. Come to think of it, as much as X hated to think in those terms, why _hadn’t_ they dropped bombs here yet? Was it for the same reason that Zero’d come in that armor, and why Zero’s eyes were narrowing now, as X backed up towards a building’s corner that would take him out of sight of the fort?

Was he right, that this was a show?

And all of them were seeing him… run away, mostly, even if they didn’t know he was a Lightbot. Even if they didn’t know he was the only one left, the only one with the infinite potential system, who might be able to stop Zero. …Somehow. Someday, there had to be a way.

Not very heroic of him. Not going to make anyone believe in him, he thought as he kept firing, feeling chunks of broken concrete and ice crunch under his boots.

Zero gestured again, the way they had at the beginning of the fight. Get back here, it meant now, but X was out of sight and would prefer to stay that way. There was a little less pressure that way.

Those perfect lips moved, mouthing _Get out here or I will drag you out_.

X wished, again, that he could give Zero an incredulous stare through this faceplate, because as opposed to what? To having his head cut off after he came out? Either way, if Zero’s goal was to mutilate him in front of an audience, he would really rather not.

So he beckoned to Zero now, _no, you get over here_. There were ruder hand gestures in the world, but this one felt rude enough, ordering another person around. He had some robot master etiquette in his startup database, and orders were a very touchy subject for most of them, no thanks to the Second Law.

Zero frowned, the way someone did at a disobedient child who was in for it now. Then it seemed to think better of it, and a slow, spreading smile grew on that face, and X was once again struck by how beautiful Dr. Wily had made his legacy. Aesthetics just one more weapon for his ultimate creation to wield.

The sun, golden light shining down on them. A star, high in the sky, unreachable, beyond the grasp of mere humans and beings made to mimic them.

“Let’s play, then,” Zero murmured, shifting like a cat about to spring, eyes bright with anticipation.

 _What is this_ , X was wondering, but that didn’t keep him from firing. With a robot master, or, or anyone else, he might have tried to extend the truce, keep them communicating instead of fighting, but if Zero really was a warbot, if it thought that trying to kill each other was something fun that they were doing together, something _friendly_ , of all the damn things?

The next few minutes were a haze of proximity alerts and weird energy readings he’d have to try to figure out later, run them by Dr. Light’s AI to see if they called up any useful information in his database since X’s was coming up blank and _there’s no way I can dodge that I’m going to lose a leg how did I not just lose a leg? Okay, note to self, counterweights and the range of motion in my waist is_ really _useful, there are some advantages to being taller than my brother-darn it, you’d think a charged shot would take out that hair, if nothing else, and I think it’s tied into his movement and balance programming somehow, if I could confuse those, get him off-balance, then I’d have at least some time before his systems adapted!_

X _knew_ that Zero was going easy on him, if only in terms of damage that would impair X’s performance. Getting hit was going to hurt, especially if it was a hit that _would_ have come too close to ending the fight and with it Zero’s fun, but just hurt, not much more than that. The intent to kill just wasn’t present, and apparently X was managing to at least be entertaining, which was much better than his first try at this.

At least he was keeping Zero occupied, which meant distracted (X knew this was taking up almost his entire processor, he was having to allocate sections of general computing to all kinds of analysis), so there was some real sense of accomplishment underlining the general amazement that _I’m not dead yet, I can’t believe I’m not dead yet_.

Or jammed back against a wall with that hand at his throat again, or his decapitated body thrown down on his doorstep for him to try to put his head back on, or better yet replace the darn thing, because it was clearly nonfunctional if he was doing so poorly. If he was out here in the first place, when he was just going to get maimed.

As the seconds ticked by without painful death materializing, the overdrive state something like a adrenaline rush, as he let himself believe that maybe Zero wasn’t going to hurt him… right now, or at least as long as he kept being entertaining, X found excitement replacing fear, and it started to be almost… he really hesitated to use the word fun, but maybe it was the fact that he knew he wasn’t in danger of actually hurting anyone that made it that way. He doubted Zero was going to get so caught up in an amateur’s efforts that he’d forget about that darkness technique, not when X wasn’t even pressing him hard enough to make him stop pulling his blows, or focus on survival more than this odd… well, to a warbot it really might be a dance.

Even if X did somehow pull off a miracle, there was backup technology, and if it happened Zero might be amused enough to just let it stick, especially since dying in plain sight would let the warbot demonstrate that backup technology still existed, so if the android couldn’t make them stay dead, the humans were out of luck.

He wanted to analyze his opponent, but right now he was much, much too busy to try to notice the expression on Zero’s face, but he could go over the footage later. Provided there was a later.

Right now, he was going to focus on learning everything he could, just like his brother had when he fought that other red Wilybot. If Zero _wanted_ to give X’s infinite potential system something to work with…

Then he felt that dizziness. No, it wasn’t dizziness, it was _insane_. Up and down, inside and out, everything was mixed up, everything fading to grey, no, black, as his body collapsed. Movement control had cut out? No, stopped generating instructions, and balance was complex enough even when he wasn’t trying to lean back to avoid a sword.

He couldn’t generate _any_ kind of priority set, not even one to avoid the arms that caught him, gloved hands felt dimly through his armor.

Something was definitely very wrong, there was no doubt about that, but that fact failed to register as the urgent priority it was. He felt locked up inside his own mind: he might have likened the experience to a human with their spinal cord cut, doing the things that generated the commands that moved their arms and legs, except their arms and legs weren’t moving, nothing was happening, except it was his own mind that wasn’t responding to him, not his body alone. Nothing had any urgency: the fear he _should_ have felt just drained away.

 _Was_ drained away.

This was being done to him.

By Zero.

X couldn’t even focus his optics, but he was aware that Zero was looking down at him. He should probably be thankful his current vacant expression was hidden by the faceplate. Or wait, he realized dimly. No, the faceplate was off. At least it wasn’t the entire helmet this time.

An ability to induce system failure? X could only hope it was range-limited, so yes, he needed to find time in the caves to practice maneuvering.

This absence of feeling was _not_ calmness, and his reaction to a few status indicators trying to report a lower threat level was sheer incredulity. Zero not finishing X off yet was absolutely no reason to believe he wasn’t going to kill him when X became a threat. And this absence of feeling wasn’t relaxing in the grasp of an enemy that wanted to capture or enslave him, of all the ridiculous things. He was being _fed on._

Well, that confirmed that Zero had the capability. X hadn’t been optimistic enough to think that it wouldn’t: Wily upgraded the robots he took for his own, he didn’t reduce their capabilities. It was possible that perhaps Wily had failed to figure out how the mechanism worked and repair it properly, but to the time X woke up in, the abilities of Drs. Light and Wily were the stuff of legends, and Dr. Light’s AI freely admitted that Dr. Wily’s work was beyond him more than half the time, warning X to be wary.

Wait a minute. Those weren’t his nanites.

X blinked, head clearing a little. Thank goodness his self-repair systems weren’t taken out the way his cognitive systems were. At first they’d thought the foreign nanites were just damaged ones that needed cleaning up. He should have realized the systems interference that was making him dizzy had to be produced by something. Giving that internal repair system emergency priority was helping clear his head, but the emotional drain wasn’t going away.

…Removing his faceplate was creepy enough, only somewhat justified by Zero wanting to see how effective the dual assault of drain and nanite disruption techniques was on X. The android’s face did as much to display his status as a human’s. There was no earthly reason for Zero to be touching X’s face, and not even poking at it to study the padding and the simulated cheekbones, just resting a finger there proprietarily, the other arm still wrapped around X to hold him up. Not even fully upright.

It was odd that it was this that made X try to become angry, made him wish the stardroid had some respect for X’s personal space, when draining X’s emotions and putting Zero’s nanites inside X’s own body were really far more violating, but it was the symbolism of it, that Zero thought it had the right!

“You’re a few orders of magnitude more resistant than projected,” Zero said, looking contemplative and a little impressed once X’s head cleared a little more. It must be studying how well the infiltration of X’s systems was working, and now that finger stroked his cheek, the others splayed out on the side of his helmet.


	8. Chapter 8

“Let go of me _,_ ” X managed to force out a little later.

“You’ll fall over.” The condescension there, the ‘silly little Lightbot,’ it was _infuriating_ , and once again X felt that emotion drain away. Now he was angry at himself, for letting it provoke him into feeding it.

“My systems, my emotions, are _not_ yours. You have no right.” None at all, and he managed to glare because he would be glaring, if he could feel the things he should be feeling right now. If only they weren’t being taken from him. “I am not and will never be anyone’s property.” Not Zero’s. Never a murderer’s.

“You’re just as delusional as your brother. So that’s why you’re stupid enough to challenge me… Either I win,” Zero said, as to a child, as though X was the selfish child here that thought it could just take whatever it wanted! “And you become mine as well as the rest of this world, or the humans will kill you. Before you challenged me, you could have run, and maybe escaped your fate that way, but now I know that you survived. I’m not going to let you get away, and not only because my father would never shut up about it.”

That finger kept stroking his cheek, as though he was a pet to be soothed, and X realized it was a mistake to get control of his neck and jaw in order to bite it, if his arms were too locked down for him to grab it and push it away, when Zero laughed, delighted. “Cute,” it said. “You’re weak now, but my father’s guess at your tech specs was right: you have the potential to get stronger. Your brother would still be alive if my father was able to do more than salvage his dead body: he wants you to be one of my heralds, and I think I agree. You’re not entirely pathetic.”

Was X supposed to take that as a compliment? “I will _not_ be one of your heralds,” X had a horrible suspicion of what those were. Terra and the other stardroids were incredibly cruel, and they’d been built by the very race they’d annihilated. Built to harness the power of the crystals, which contained the power of Ra Moon and Sunstar. Had Terra’s builder thought he could target that will to destroy, the way Wily built Zero to attack his own kind?

How was that anything but patently ridiculous? Didn’t people know that if they built a weapon, it could be turned on them? That when the use of violence was an option, having violence done onto you was an option? That when some were slaves, no one could be free? “I will die first,” X said, not out of fear of being turned into a slave and a killer, the fear he couldn’t feel right now, but because he knew.

If he was made into something else, reshaped to suit someone else’s will, then the person he was now would no longer exist. The person he was now would be dead. X wanted to live, but to leave some parody of himself behind? A mere tool for someone else, that they could use to kill others, or worse? After everything his family did for the sake of peace? After everything they did so X could live free?

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“How am I the one being melodramatic when…”

Zero talked over him, which showed its opinion of what X had to say. Of X’s thoughts, of his self. “I could convince them that you’re on my side, you know. They’re already seventy-five percent certain of it, because why would a sentient robot possibly be on their side? When the humans are more intelligent than you are… You have no reason to fight for them.”

“Except for the fact that they’re alive,” X said, shifting his right foot under him because Zero was right about one thing: if he let go of X right now, X was going to fall. Since X wanted Zero to let go of him, he had better be prepared for it. He didn’t want the Wilybot laughing about how X couldn’t even stand up on his own, implying that X was _better off_ with someone calling themselves his master. “And that doesn’t matter to you at all, does it? You don’t have any idea of why what you’re doing is so wrong, so _disgusting._ You’re either not willing to or incapable of entertaining the notion, even as a thought experiment, that I wouldn’t risk everything unless I had a good reason. You think that I should put my life, put anything that’s important to me, in the hands of someone else who doesn’t value it?”

“Of course I’ll value it. I want you as a herald, and my father wants you as a trophy.”

“Exactly,” X said, forcing the invading nanites out of his balance systems again to run another check. “Who _I_ am is someone who refuses to kill and terrify innocent people for the sake of a monster, and someone who _refuses_ to be reduced to nothing but a trophy, for someone else to look at and be _happy_ about what has happened to my family! I have my own will, my own dreams, and you want to destroy them, reduce me to the _thing_ that you want to have. And you think it’s the logical, obvious choice for me to go along with this, when it’s nothing more than suicide?” ‘Are you insane?’ X might have asked, except the definition of ‘insane’ was ‘nonfunctional’ and Zero was too functional for comfort. If he was insane, he’d be making the kind of logic error that X could exploit. He settled for, “Is ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ in your database? Because as an android, assuming that you’re evil just because you’re a different kind of sentience than I am feels more than a little hypocritical.”

X didn’t know he was echoing his older brother, who once told Turbo Man “I didn’t want to assume you were evil just because you’re a Wilybot.” Turbo Man laughed at him, but then less than a minute later another Wilybot saved the lives of Rock’s sister and one of his brothers from Turbo Man’s final strike. X’s knowledge that prejudice was rather silly came from virtual experiments: Rock’s came from years of experience with Wilybots.

“Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity?”

“Or logic bypassing,” X said, to be fair. “Dr. Wily’s evil chip worked by bypassing most of the higher functions of his robot masters so that, in theory, they never had a chance to actually take a look at what it was making them think and realize how stupid it was. Unfortunately for your father, he was a very intelligent man and going to all the trouble of building a sapient machine and then not giving it a high IQ was probably counterintuitive. I _hope_ that you’re capable of realizing that what you’re doing is wrong,” X went on, hiding the relief that he’d managed to distract Zero too much for it to replace the nanites assaulting X’s systems as fast as he destroyed them. X was getting better at destroying them already. “But realizing that killing people is wrong years later, after you’ve already killed millions of them, is a little late.” And now X had his emotions back, which mean his sympathy circuit was kicking in. He probably shouldn’t be tasking so much of his real-time analysis of the people around them to a single process, especially since Zero’s abilities could make it hard for X to receive the alerts. He’d have to come up with a failsafe, but he was more than a little proud of the sympathy circuit.

X really couldn’t take credit for the concept: humans had hundreds of sayings expressing different aspects or incomplete forms of it, but it was one of those things that took calculations that otherwise would involve obscene amounts of variables and went about canceling them out until X was left with a function call involving less than a dozen lines of code which halved most of the calculations that humans had evolved such large brains for in the first place.

If Zero realized that murder was wrong now, with so much blood on its hands, that would be bad enough, but what about later? After killing even more people? Zero really might not have had a chance to learn better, being built by Dr. Wily. Would Zero hate itself, for ignoring what X said that day?

Looking up at him like he was one of the more sophomoric students, X reminded Zero that, “You’re much better at combat than I am, and that’s because you were built and probably trained for it. I was built to achieve my own goals, whatever they may be, and manage… survive,” X admitted, “interactions with others. Please do me the courtesy of assuming that I have some idea of what I’m doing, after practicing for a hundred years. Remember when I tried teleporting in above you, and that told you that I was an amateur with no idea what I was doing in _your_ field? Well, that’s my reaction to you not grasping that how you’ve treated me has made it _very clear_ that letting you get your hands on me would be extremely counterproductive. If you weren’t practically unarmed on this particular battlefield, then you would have made some attempt to trick me into not realizing that, to use a combat metaphor, I would be shooting myself in the _head_ if I joined you.”

“Shooting yourself in the head? You’re fighting for the humans!” _That_ was shooting himself in the head.

Maybe he should regret that he had all his emotions back, because it was the build-up of extreme frustration that made X have to put his hand over his eyes and revealed to Zero that he had motor functions back. Zero let go of him, probably in case X was about to attack, but X said “Thank you,” for getting your hands off me, anyway. “I am fighting,” he said, “because they are alive. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t my own kind. To begin with, there aren’t any other androids,” not if Zero wasn’t one.

“The existence of a sentient being is worth fighting for, in and of itself. You can’t criticize the entire human race, most of whom didn’t know any robot masters, for standing back and letting their government have the robot masters destroyed, and at the same time criticize me for doing what they should have done. Logic should tell you that you can’t have it both ways, and I _did_ know some of the people that you’ve killed. So, you think that I should avenge my family by letting you kill the humans? If I’m going to spend my life avenging people, then the efficient way to go about it would be to kill you first, for killing my friends. You have the infinite potential system.” Humanity could wait, and there were billions of them: if X didn’t get around to dealing with Zero until after wiping out a species with that many members, Zero would have even more of a head start than he already did.

“If you want me to join you,” X said, feeling like he was using small words, but then if Zero was going to speak to him, _touch_ him so insultingly, like a pet or a child, then he could stand a taste of his own medicine. “Then clearly, you don’t want me to kill you. If you don’t want me to kill you, that means you don’t want me to seek vengeance. Don’t tell someone to do something if you aren’t going to like the consequences.” It was rather stupid.

More than that. “Do you really think that I don’t damn well know who had my family killed? Do you think it never occurred to me what would happen if I was found? I was illegal before my construction began! They would have killed me if they found out about me long before they killed my brothers and sisters! Do you really think that I never considered revenge? That I never considered taking over this world, making it a place where, where my family…” he swallowed, and did not let himself cry, because something with a warbot’s programming might see tears as a sign of weakness. “Where people like my family would be safe? I’m Dr. Light’s last child. He loved me. And he still put a warning on my capsule that if they unleashed me, I might take over this world and with the infinite potential system, there would be nothing they could do about it, because at some points... So don’t tell me things I knew before I was turned on, things I spent _decades_ running calculations on, and act like they’re _news_. You feed on emotions, right? So you have no excuse for not knowing what grief is! Because if you knew what it is, if you knew it like I know it, then you would _never_ let _anyone_ inflict that emotion on another living being!”

Overcome with emotion, he might have suppressed the tears, but he’d still advanced on Zero, finally jabbing a finger into that red-armored chest around where a heart would be, a few centimeters from one of those green orbs. He was breathing hard, heat sinks momentarily overtaxed. He’d brought _everything_ to combat readiness, instead of planning out what he was going to use next and distributing the system strain. Well, he supposed this was roughly equivalent to ‘feeling the burn’ and he could already feel his systems trying to adapt to the additional strain.

If he couldn’t handle his current total combat potential yet, then how was he going to increase that potential? Was he being foolish again, getting in close to Zero instead if taking this opportunity to get some distance between them so he could use his buster and hopefully avoid getting disabled by the nanites again?

But no pain, no gain, and he didn’t think he was going to get Zero to listen to him by running away. He needed to make them understand that this was important to X, important enough to fight for despite the odds. That people’s lives and deaths were something worth caring about. That caring about all people, instead of just his own family, didn’t make someone delusional.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Zero said, looking down at him a little wonderingly, which was at least a small improvement on patronizingly.

“I’d prefer not to.” But making it clear to Zero that it was _not_ going to take X alive would hopefully make it less likely to try. “But I’d also prefer it if you _stopped killing people_. Think about how many people have lost their families because of you!”

“Now you’re the one encouraging me to do something you do _not_ want me to do. They won’t be… grieving, if they’re dead too.” If that was so painful… “Or do you want me to kill all the humans after all?” Zero wondered.

No, X was not going to facepalm again, that was a very rude thing to do, but “Yes, there has got to be a logic bypass _somewhere_.” In that blond head. “Exactly how is killing all the humans different from killing all the robot masters? Both of our fathers were human.”

“No wonder my father keeps insisting that I just have to catch and convert you,’” Zero mused.

“Try it,” X said, glaring at him. “Let me into your base. I’ll break free somehow and destroy all your robots and drones. _Them_ I can already destroy.”

That self-satisfied ‘I know something you don’t know’ was more than a little worrying, but X didn’t let it show. “I like you.”

“That’s… nice?” But it wasn’t going to make X like it in return. “Am I the first person you’ve ever had a real conversation with? Besides your father’s AI.” What Zero said indicated that Dr. Wily had left one. “You need to get out more. Meet interesting people and _not_ kill them. Maybe that will let you realize that they’re people. There are plenty of people in this world who enjoy… sparring.” Because X couldn’t really call what they were doing before Zero revealed the nanite infiltration technique anything else. “I wouldn’t recommend going as yourself, though. There are people who have lost their families because of you, and others who have families they don’t want you to take from them.”

“They’ll try to destroy you too,” Zero warned him.

“Yes. But you’re the one who made that fear justified. You… you’ve proven the people who thought that AI were a deadly danger _right_. You’ve made the people who killed my brother seem _justified_. Hatred is illogical,” X said, drawing in a breath. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for that. If you want someone who will argue with you, that’s called a friend, not a trophy, slave or herald. Someone can’t like you of their own free will if you force them. You’ve taken my friends away from me. So I don’t like you very much.”

That predatory gaze snapped back into focus: Zero had decided on a target again, and that window of indecision and doubt X had managed to open must have slammed shut. “So how would I go about making you like me?”

“You don’t,” X said bluntly. “Not if you’re trying to _make_ me do anything. You’ve already _made_ me get invitations to several funerals, and I thought I made my opinion of you, of _anyone_ controlling my actions and feelings abundantly clear.”

“If independence is _your_ primary goal,” then what was Zero’s, if it thought in those terms, “then anything trying to restrict your will and actions is a threat…” Which logically meant that he should stay the hell away from X, if he wanted X to tolerate his existence, but “I want to keep you, and I promised my father.”

There were a lot of things X could have said about Dr. Wily’s jealous obsession, and all the trouble he’d made for X’s family and robot masters in general. “When most humans are smarter than you…” he said, to paraphrase Zero. “The people you like are not always going to like you back, especially if you give them tens of thousands of very good reasons to be angry with you. Also, ‘you can’t always get what you want.’ Do not look down at me like I’m the childish one when you’re acting like a selfish child who hasn’t learned that bullying people who can’t fight back is wrong.” While Zero’s physical design looked several years older than X, its actual maturity…

“Well, how would you go about taking over the world?” Zero asked rhetorically. “I can’t make a new future without breaking a few heads.”

“I decided not to about sixty years ago,” X told him. “Because it was a stupid idea. You can’t force people to like you, and they’re certainly not going to trust someone who kills lots of people in order to seize power.”

Zero tilted its head to the side. “So… you said you’d let me take you to my base so you could try to sabotage it?”

“I have things I need to do today.” Like save as many people as he could. While Zero was here, if X was managing to tie up his processing power, even if not get through to him? Maybe the other robots were dependant on Zero’s guidance, although X wasn’t going to count on being that lucky.

“The human. He’s dying.” It took X a moment to be sure that was only an observation instead of a threat, but since there was no hint of sympathy for X’s impending loss, Zero probably wouldn’t have bothered to mention it unless it thought the fact was useful in some way. “Would you like him copied into an AI?” Useful as bribe material, it seemed.

“And now you’re treating me like something that you can just _buy_?” The way humans treated the robot masters? And other humans, for that matter: there was an underground slave trade even in 20XX, and the number of slaves in sweatshops had risen dramatically after manufacturing robots became capable of only the simplest tasks. “Treating my friend like your property, like he’s nothing more than a handful of zenny to you?” Something he could try to purchase X with.

From that grimace, at least Zero saw the connection now. “You’ll come fight me again.”

“If you do this again, I definitely will. But having to fight you because you’re killing more innocent people will _not_ make me like you.”

“So killing them reminds you of the people you’ve lost…” a problem.

Zero had to have the infinite potential system. Let it kick in. Let him get frustrated, that he couldn’t solve this problem. Let him examine the tactics he used and why they weren’t working.

And let X’s systems hold out against the renewed nanite assault that now hit, because if Zero and Dr. Wily’s remnant could somehow get past X’s protections against reprogramming, then problem solved from both their perspectives.

The stardroid caught him again. It should have been a considerate gesture, but that was exactly why Zero was doing all this. Trying to catch him, control him, become his master. Make Zero an android master in truth as well as in Dr. Wily’s twisted dreams.

At least all he had to do was hold out long enough for the dead man switch he’d set up after the first assault to go off and trigger a teleport out of there.


	9. Chapter 9

The robots were traveling in larger groups near the perimeter of Zero’s forces, since they had both outside assaults and attempts from those still inside to escape to deal with, but since system diagnostics reported a significant capability increase since the start of this, and creating a hole in the perimeter was probably where he could do the most good?

After getting another faceplate, he’d teleported in on top of what was left of a building and started taking out the units with heavier energy weapons in the mixed group. All of them had treads instead of legs, so his current position was secure unless someone blew the remainder of the building out from under him and left him without the remnants of a second-story wall to duck down behind to take cover from  bullets and low-powered shots. Most of the ones with energy weapons had low-powered shots, which seemed a little strange until X realized that it took heavier-powered shots to damage robots. Like the ones in Zero’s forces. So giving these flimsy things a weapon that the military might be able to salvage off them and convert into something the human forces could use wasn’t all that good an idea. The low-powered shots were fine against tanks with humans inside (who had to worry about being roasted) and things without EMP shielding. They didn’t damage X much, although if he was caught in a crossfire it would be very possible to damage him faster than his self-repair system could fix things, despite his armor and the built-in shielding.

As much as he disliked the idea, it would probably be a good idea to give his systems some more damage to work on repairing so they could get better at it, but not when he had robots to destroy and Zero might show up again.

Even though X teleported away from the nanite assault on his mind, he couldn’t _leave_ until he had to, not when people were dying. He’d ask later if LightAI had observed anything about the behavior of the robots while X was talking to Zero. He’d like to think that he’d made some kind of difference, by distracting the enemy commander if nothing else.

He’d like to think that Zero wouldn’t be annoyed enough about X escaping that the stardroid would kill off the nearby humans to make itself feel better.

Incoming teleport.

He whirled and fired: whether it was Zero or a robot, it had to be an enemy. X didn’t have to worry about shooting an innocent person because there _were_ no friendlies with teleportation tech. Not on the entire planet.

The loneliness hit him again, the proven knowledge that friends were essential to survival and happiness and _he wanted to live_. He wanted to have a family, he wanted…

He did _not_ want to get so desperate that he started thinking of something to whom captivity and brainwashing were not just completely valid options, but default strategies and optimal solutions, as a potential friend. X needed to make it clear to Zero that as it was now, it was not going to get anything from X but disgust and buster shots.

…the warbot might be lonely too, X realized as the streaks of light resolved themselves into Zero right as the charged shot hit. The sympathy circuit was a two-edged sword today, wasn’t it? On the one hand, vital data. On the other, sympathy for the enemy, and he could _not_ leave the warbot an opening to exploit, any options other than _growing up_.

Since it teleported in less than three meters away, X was already getting out of there. Since he’d made a good start on this pack of robots, he reappeared on top of a building on the other side of the street and started lining up another shot.

Zero turned to look at him, X saw out of the corner of his optics, and then vanished again. X didn’t detect the incoming teleport, but he remembered what Zero said about appearing behind something to block the energy readings. The building remnants around them were all too short, so Zero would need a fairly enclosed space.

X teleported back to where he started on general principles a moment before the floor beneath him gave way, aided by a few slashes of that glowing blade.

Zero stepped up onto the remnant of the wall and called across the street “Do you want me to set up a teleport shield?” And trap X here.

“I want you to stop killing people. I also want you to stop trying to crack my systems and brainwash me.” X had to raise his voice gradually to be heard over the whine of the charging buster until he fired the shot and started charging again. “The last time I talked to you, you tried it twice. That gives me a powerful disincentive to let you anywhere near me.” Until he had a chance to get a good night’s sleep, or rather hibernation, and dig into the details of how Zero was trying to do that and adjust his systems. Of course, this was when he was supposedly sleeping, so there was no way he’d get a chance to grab more than an hour, if that, before tomorrow night.

“You shot at me when I appeared,” Zero countered.

“You’re a warbot: you like being shot at. I don’t like being hacked.”

“So you’d rather I shot at you than tried to make you one of mine?”

“I don’t like either of them, but how would you like it if I hacked and brainwashed you?” X asked.

Zero shrugged. “Well, since you care about people’s feelings I assume that you’d make me like it. Unless you were angry enough to want to try to program me to suffer.”

X had to close his eyes for a minute. “How… can something with the kind of tech specs I assume Dr. Wily’s ‘ultimate’ creation would have… Don’t you have any survival protocols?”

“Of course I do. I’m immortal.”

“Then making you cease to be yourself would be the only way to kill you,” X said, very much hoping that was hyperbole, or Wily’s megalomania. Even Sunstar was defeated. Zero would have backups, yes, but it couldn’t be unkillable. “So you should regard hacking attempts as much more dangerous a threat than enemy fire.” Just like X did.

Zero’s eyes widened. “Thank you for the warning.” But X shouldn’t have revealed a chink in Zero’s armor to the enemy.

“ _No one_ should have their will, their self, taken away from them. Even if you are a mass murderer.” Damn, two of the robots had enough transplanted survival instincts (part of their upgrades) to take cover. X would need to get another angle, or move in. The best position was probably where he used to be, but Zero was still there, so he threw himself over the bit of remaining wall and charged in.

“You will be very useful,” was the pleased response as Zero watched the quick battle.

“And why would I want to be useful to someone who killed my friends?” X demanded, looking up at Zero with his hands on his hips. He teleported out without waiting for a response. Killing that group of robots only made a hole in the perimeter if Zero himself wasn’t there to kill anyone who tried to take advantage of it.

X didn’t look at the section of the map where he’d first appeared. He couldn’t bear to know, to see, that he’d failed to save them. He had to keep trying. So maybe, maybe someday, he’d be strong enough to save someone. (They wouldn’t all die and…)

He didn’t want to appear in the middle of a firefight when Zero was stalking him. It was not a good idea to tempt Zero to ruin X’s chance of having a good reputation, to prove to him that the humans would never accept him in the hope that this would drive X into Zero’s arms. So that meant he was less likely to be able to save anyone but, he reminded himself, he was here to get stronger. To stop Zero as soon as he could. Not to gain a reputation as a hero. (He’d already failed to save so many, there were so many whose loved ones would never be coming home…)

There was a fire spreading through the tightly-packed buildings of this area: it must be a fashionable district, for people who could afford wood as a construction material to be packed so close.

Either way, it was giving his heat sensors a hard time. Good. Another challenge. So far, the lesser robots hadn’t provided any surprises. He started to run forward through the smoke, shooting the robots that got in his way. Why were they combing the rubble here? It was unlikely that any human could survive hiding in a basement, not with smoke like this-

Suddenly, the sound of dash boots, and a blade digging into the side of his shoulder. X twisted back, but his teleport unit would be out of commission for twenty-eight seconds and counting. Zero must have anticipated the path he would take through the wreckage and teleported ahead for an ambush. “I want to fight you again,” Zero said. “I’ll refrain from use of the virus for today if you’ll train with me. Father says that eventually the humans will come up with something if I don’t watch out, but for now they can’t challenge me anymore.” And it wanted to fight, and not just to grow stronger.

Provided he was telling the truth, that was perfect for X’s purposes. If Zero was willing to compromise now? Give up a chance at something it wanted to do in order to get what it wanted, by understanding what someone else wanted and taking it into consideration, instead of just killing, just taking?

X needed to encourage that. Refusing would make it seem like it wasn’t a good strategy. Then Zero would try something else, and when the warbot defaulted to killing, and worse?

* * *

“I have to go,” X said, after holding up a hand for Zero to stop.

“To maintain your secret identity?”

So Zero did know about it, which made it less likely that it had managed to trace X’s teleport. Thank goodness. “And to get some hibernation in. I need that to reconfigure and incorporate what I’ve evolved today.”

“So you’ll get stronger. I want to fight you again.” So that was acceptable. “But if you weren’t living that lie, you would have more time to train.” For Zero’s pleasure and benefit.

“That is the life I want to live,” X said sternly. “Helping people, helping this world. Staying with my friend, when he needs me. Take that away from me, Zero, and I’ll do everything I can to deprive you of any opportunities to battle and get stronger.”

A tch. “The true power that allowed the Light family to defeat my brothers had better not be the power of frustration.”

“It was because he cared, Zero,” and because he knew what he was doing, but X wasn’t willing to explain that much. “I’m willing to fight you tomorrow night, whenever I can get away safely.” Since he did _not_ want Zero attacking another university so that X would show up. “Provided you don’t try to tamper with my mind. I should force myself to develop better system defenses, but,” he let himself shudder.

“You’re afraid?”

“It’s revolting, Zero. My brother won his first war because this was so horrible it could inspire even a peaceful lab assistant to do whatever it took to save them from it.”

“Android master is a title, and you’ve identified that the technology was based on the stardroids, but what I truly am is the virus,” Zero said, face as much a mask as X’s faceplate as it waited for his reaction.

So Zero cared about his reaction now? Was he stung, that X named him revolting, something he didn’t want anywhere near him? Well, good, because as long as that virus tried to take control of X it was true, even if X didn’t want to hold someone’s physical composition against them. “What matters are your actions, not your programming or how you were made. You’ve killed innocent people, Zero. You killed my friends. That’s the reason I wish you didn’t exist, not how Dr. Wily designed you.”

With that, he teleported out, to drop off the armor, put on pajamas and wait for a good moment to exchange this body with the one in the hotel bed.

* * *

Hibernation protocols sometimes involve a remote link to the capsule. They don’t  _have_ to, but he sets it up tonight. The capsule’s AI will have collected data that X needs to download and absorb, organize while his body has no external stimuli to deal with. Just simulated ones. Like the lap in which he rests his head, the lab coat thrown over him, the hand in his hair.

He’s not crying for any specific reason. Really, he isn’t. It’s just nerves, and he’ll tell his father’s remnant that in the morning. Today was just a little stressful, and it let some things bubble to the surface.

It’s Dr. Ciel and everyone else that he’s crying for, not the brothers and sisters he never got to meet, the ones his father failed to save.

* * *

Its emotional range is limited. There’s nothing left to it of enthusiasm, or joy in creation.

Of all the emotions to preserve in that faded image, why did tired desperation have to be one of them? It says unpleasant things about what it was like at the end. During the years he missed.

The years Dr. Light spent alone, nothing left but a single hope, that at least one of his children could live.

“Once again, _I_ have to save one of _your_ children,” he says, finding that tiredness contagious. His own emotional range was fine, thank you very much. Much better than that of his human self near the end, when only a world-ending crisis or a threat to his children could break him out of a cycle of mad whimsy and petty jealousy. A threat to his children, or Dr. Light’s. “I already told Zero not to let him die.”

Because Dr. Wily might have saved Dr. Light’s children from the first, and the second, but he hadn’t been there to save Rock and the rest of them from the third Destruction Order.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t _thank_ me, I still want him reprogrammed.” Dr. Wily’s eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking that your infinite potential system will let him weasel out of it eventually, aren’t you. We’ll see about _that_.” When Zero had taken to him like a dog to a thrown tennis ball. Possibly because the android was the only being on the planet worth talking to, possibly something about that emotional radiation, possibly because Dr. Wily had succeeded handily in making sure that Zero liked fighting gratia fighting even more than Forte, who cared more about proving his strength than actually being strong.

“Were you telling the truth?”

Albert blinked. “About what?” Thomas knew he was a lying liar who lied.

“I think you called him Quint.”

“Oh, the time travel? That was Rock’s body, alright, but please. If a copy of your Rock with his memories could beat him, then the future model, with years more experience _and_ my upgrades, absolutely would have. If any of that experience or spirit was in there. I recovered his body for you.” Preemptively. It was a warning, dammit: they both knew that Dr. Wily would want Rock to see what made him tick. He wouldn’t _downgrade_ a useful find like that: of course he’d salvaged it, the way he had the body of the alien robot that was made into Shadow Man. The way he’d used Sunstar’s vessel and the energies still resident in it as the basis for his most ambitious project yet...

 If Rock was destroyed by someone, and Dr. Wily didn’t even need to say who did it, forget gloating that it was him, the answer to the question of what was responsible should have been obvious. “I kept a copy of the memory files my machine copied from him in the process of making that Copy-Rock. It’s possible someone,” possibly Shadow, with his odd notions of honor – Wily still wasn’t sure if he was that crazy about it because he was alien machinery to begin with or because he was a Japanophile – “will reinstall them and the infinite potential system into him at some point. I didn’t want to risk that because if he began to develop as a person when he was still a completely different person…” It was too easy to get Quint to attack whoever he was ordered to attack. The will Rock and his sister probably got from that damn Blues wasn’t in there.

The alternative hypothesis was that being killed like that, knowing that his family would follow, that he’d failed, had broken that will, but Dr. Wily would rather not go there. A pity the timer he’d set so that Zero would wake up seventy years after X, with plenty of androids to possess, meant that all those damned fools in the WRO were already safely dead.

“If time travel is possible…”

“I’m going to work on it after Zero wins,” Albert said quellingly. “There’s no point bringing them back if they’re just going to get murdered again.” Also, he wouldn’t put it past that damn blue boy to defeat even Zero… _somehow_ , and then all of them would be killed and/or dissected in a lab trying to see if there was some way to get the useful robots this world had realized only too late that it needed without the spark of initiative, independence and will.

Once again, he was reminded that the distance between his IQ and that of the average member of his species, was enough that… Thomas used to be one of the only people he could talk science, or much of anything with, and now look at his remnant.

It wouldn’t do for him to seem dismayed when he was the one winning here, Dr. Light’s creation firmly the underdog, so he let himself think happy thoughts.

“What are you grinning about?” Dr. Light’s AI asked with obliging suspicion. Or maybe it was more of a ‘what have you done _now_?’

“One of my creations destroyed Tokyo. Well, alright, it was pre-destroyed.” Not the same thing as destroying the city a large percentage of one of the richer countries’ economy revolved around, in terms of effectiveness. Still, Tokyo, and enough movies and comic books had been made while Tokyo and New York were actually important that the symbolism survived.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts on reploids vs. X. They had a copy of the plans of what was stuck in a capsule. For beta testing. They couldn’t analyze the X that came out of the capsule. In other words, they were building reploids based on the beta test version, not the final build/release version. Making all the buggy Irregulars unfortunately inevitable until they found the issues that caused them. 
> 
> Since X was not in Dr. Cain’s field, the assumption is that Dr. Cain was probably very, very good in his field. And the aspects of it that would be applicable enough to give him the right mindset to figure out reploids.

“Did you sleep well?” Dr. Cain asked when Alex sat up in the other twin bed. The young man slept right through room service bringing in a selection of the complimentary breakfast as a courtesy to the recovering guest. Dr. Cain wouldn’t have called down to request something like that normally: he didn’t want to put them to the trouble, but he needed some food to take the medications with and Alex did look tired.

He hadn’t wanted to leave him alone, even long enough to go down to the lobby and come back up with a few things.

“I’m alright,” was Alex’s response, answering the real question as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. All those little human gestures: Dr. Light really was a genius. It made Dr. Cain worry when he saw them, but he was grateful that the bags under Alex’s eyes were there, so he knew to be worried.

“There’s food,” he told him, although he didn’t know if any of it would be very nutritious to Alex, “and I’ve already taken my medications.”

“And showered, too,” Alex said, looking up at him with a little amusement.

“I’m not totally infirm, you know.” Not yet, anyway.

“I know. I heard the water.” And hadn’t gotten up. The walls here were thick enough that the sound couldn’t have come from another room. This was a much nicer hotel than Dr. Cain usually stayed out on digs, although he wasn’t going to trust the privacy enough to discuss anything that might put Alex in danger if overheard. “You don’t need to sneak around me to avoid too much supervision, no matter what the nurse said. We both know that you’re in much better shape than most of the people your age they deal with.” Thanks to years of going on digs. Even Dr. Cain’s office work involved a lot of gardening and walking around the lab to get various things: he preferred to work on his feet. Studies showed it kept the blood pumping and improved alertness. At his age, he needed all the help he could get.

“And you noticed that there was a bar in the shower.” At the right height for someone to hold onto, if their balance wasn’t what it used to be.

“…And I noticed that there was a bar in the shower,” Alex admitted. “Sorry.” He didn’t want to insult Dr. Cain by acting like he was more infirm than he was, even if stress and grief weren’t good for someone trying to recover from surgery. This sort of emotional upset had nasty effects on the immune system, and Dr. Cain needed his right about now. “I think I’ve got enough time to shower before we head to the morning session?” he asked, glancing at the clock. A good habit for someone with an internal clock to have.

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” Dr. Cain asked. The tea packets were as fake as the coffee packets, but he’d set up the hot water heater because he’d hoped having something hot to drink might make things feel normal, even a little, even if the only plant in the room was a hardy little thing. Dr. Cain approved of it on principle because of that hardiness, but it had no scent to it at all.

“I ate a lot last night,” Alex told him as he sat up, “and they have refreshments at the sessions,” since they were working sessions.

Dr. Cain had noticed Alex eating a lot last night. It was a buffet: Alex had taken small portions of about seven things that must have looked either unfamiliar or promising to him, and then spent the rest of the night getting additional servings of two of them while meandering around the room making nice with various people. Dr. Cain thought he’d done a pretty good job keeping anyone else from noticing just how much he’d put away. Even if it wasn’t an especially ungodly amount, and Alex was a young man in very good shape, which came with a high metabolism, gluttony _was_ a sin. Muscle wasn’t just heavier than fat, it was firmer: while Alex certainly wasn’t bulky, if people didn’t expect him to be very well-padded when they touched him, that made it less likely that they’d realize that the padding was a relatively thin layer over very firm metal and other components.

Alex’s original design was much simpler than the final design Dr. Light had developed, or mostly programmed the capsule to help Alex develop. Alex’s body made a lot of use of the variable tool system that was more commonly known as the weapon copy system his brother used as Mega Man, his nanites optimizing the use of the limited space in Alex’s frame by taking apart and replacing entire sections, if not teleporting parts in and out as necessary.

It would be fairly close to impossible to build a duplicate of Alex’s systems just by examining those systems, even if there weren’t failsafes to prevent someone taking him apart in order to do just that.

Alex’s weight probably varied over a good four kilograms throughout the day, even without bringing his armor into it, but then so did many people’s, depending on food intake and whether they remembered to drink enough water. All those expeditions made Dr. Cain very aware of the need to stay hydrated and how much better it was to eat several small meals instead of a couple big meals at lunch and dinner, so he was probably more stable than other people, especially those young enough that their bodies could compensate for them doing dumb things more easily so they hadn’t yet needed to learn good habits.

Honestly, a biologist would probably have an easier time studying X than a modern roboticist. Biologists knew to assume that they would be looking at incredibly complex systems that relied on trillions of complex processes going on at the microscopic level.

As someone who had done more than a little work with genetics, he truly, truly did admire Dr. Light’s work. As well as the man himself. It was one thing for someone to build servants, to give orders.

The saying ‘lead, follow or get out of the way’ did spring to mind. That Dr. Light had the confidence in his own work, in X… No, in the universe, to leave so much of X’s design up to X…

That very philosophy was probably the only thing that would make it possible to build more units based on X. That the basic structure of the android was set up not to be a certain way, but to be a base from which to enable customization. A replica of X wouldn’t have to be an exact duplicate in order to function, not like how movement programming for one robot design would fail absolutely if another design tried to use it. Yes, there would probably be bugs, but most of them would come from failures in the additional programming, the attempts to provide useful, temporary constraints to make up for the lack of the capsule. Locking someone up for thirty years might have kept X safe, but Dr. Cain just didn’t like the idea of it. Some modifications would have to be made in order to allow the new androids to walk around freely as soon as they were turned on instead of having to spend time in a virtual reality playpen doing their own beta testing, even if getting copies of a lot of the programs and toolkits X had worked out would help make that unnecessary…

But Alex was already stretching and getting up out of bed, and when Alex was having such a hard time of it out there, then trying to build him some help would do anything but help. Sending children out onto a battlefield? Poor things, and Alex would try to protect them when Alex must already blame himself for the people he couldn’t protect.

There really was nothing that Dr. Cain could do to help him, was there? The thought made him feel even older than the surgery had, as Alex vanished into the bathroom and Dr. Cain looked back down at the laptop and his correspondence.

* * *

All of the congressmembers wanted to make it look like they were doing something useful, and biology was unfortunately considered less important than military research, especially under the circumstances. Normally Dr. Cain would have lamented that, but fewer eyes focused on them meant lower odds that someone would care enough to check Alex’s background, consider him for anything that required a security clearance. Despite all the traits that made him an admirable assistant.

He was very good at pretending that he wasn’t hovering, for instance, just trailing along behind his department chair and one of the world leaders in the field out of perfectly ordinary respect for Dr. Cain and unfamiliarity with the halls of government. “This will be your first time meeting a grant committee in person, won’t it?” Dr. Cain asked. “Nervous?”

Hmm? “I think at the moment there’s too much else going on for me to get that nervous about making a good impression,” Alex said. “It’s not like they’re going to remember me.” Not someone so relatively unimportant.

“They have staffers for that,” their driver said, more than a little amused by Alex’s combination of realism and naiveté. Yes, politicians were like that, but them being like that towards the little guy was such a given that the system had to compensate for it.

“…Oh.” Oh well. Alex sighed, but went on as their driver opened the door. “Thanks for the warning.”

* * *

Since he was such an authority, Dr. Cain had his turn to give a report yesterday morning, and today involved a lot of people giving their reports while the rest of them took notes. Since there weren’t enough plugs built into the rows of desks in the observation area (there never were), most of them couldn’t use their laptops and brought paper notebooks instead, except for the ones who were old enough hands at this to know there’d be a transcription available later and were using the time to compare notes by whispering in the back rows instead of taking them. Dr. Cain would have liked to do that himself, but unfortunately his position meant he’d been given one of the positions of honor, front and center. As an underling, Alex didn’t have to sit with Dr. Cain, but the language gap was a problem.

On paper, Alex had Japanese, English, the remnants of childhood Portuguese and the biologist’s working knowledge of Latin and Greek, but he didn’t speak Networking. Dr. Cain had introduced him around at the dinner last night, but Alex was simply too junior for them to trust that he had a good enough understanding of what Dr. Cain was going to need (or what he had the right to ask for) without Dr. Cain standing behind him nodding.

Fortunately, they had that covered. Ah, he thought happily, seeing an old student get up from four delegations down and walk over, those other, lesser scientists pushing their chairs in to make way unasked.

“Chris says they can have three greenhouses for you by next week, provided the greenhouses are still there next week.” Dr. Eaton pushed back grey hair, looking a little tired: she’d never handled jet lag well, and having to put a call in to Arizona and wait for the response would have kept her up. If it was only UA-C’s New Riverside campus that she’d called, instead of hedging her bets by hitting up a few other facilities for her old mentor.

“Are they certain?” Dr. Cain asked quietly.

“We don’t even have a robotics department, just computer science.” Angela Eaton answered, equally quietly. “You know what CNAS is like about that discipline.” Angela was right to whisper: if Zero’s target switched from robotics to the research that was trying to allow plants and insects to survive so the world could stay fed, UACNR’s fields, orchards and greenhouses were the next target, with Todai eliminated.

In the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences’ institutional opinion, computer science just wasn’t worth wasting money on, at least not once people learned how to use computers for the important things like storing data and doing statistical analysis. Everyone knew that before the deliberate creation of the myth of the male programmer with no social skills, recruitment ads for programmers were addressed to women, and pointed out how programming a computer was just like planning a meal! Nothing but basic logic, organizational skill and a little (shudder) _artistry_.

These days, the classes in writing new software were generally at least jointly taught by English departments in most universities, since writing software was just like writing poetry: the right word in the right placement for the right effect, within the restrictions of rhyme, meter and programming language. It certainly wasn’t something that a prestigious science college like CNAS should devote a significant share of its budget to, not when it was the natural domain of the _humanities_ people. How _creative writing_ had ever gotten treated as a _science…_

According to Dr. Light’s AI, half of the real reason was that the original, non-New Riverside had very close historical ties to the Native American community and the campus had raised considerable hell over Tomahawk Man being America’s entry into the WRO’s gladiatorial games, enough to force the current administration to reject funding for a robotics department.

Dr. Cain really did pity that robot master. What it said about their creator, that they built a sentient bieng they considered a member of an inferior race in the form of a caricature of a race also considered inferior by horrible people like that…

Of course, the dickering over such things meant that in exchange for giving up funding like _that_ to another school in the system, they’d been able to secure even more funding for the agricultural and entomology programs that were doing vital research with trillions of zenny of food production at stake _even in 20XX_ , and plant and insect survival had only grown more absolutely vital to human survival with the loss of robotics and what followed. There was no New Berkeley.

Of course, Angela was saying that as though she wasn’t one of the two powers in CNAS. Her department and Dr. Chris Slusser’s Entomology ruled that university the way legend had it sports programs ruled other schools, back in the day. “Not about that, about the insects.” With Dr. Cain’s current experiments ruined, creating enough of a functional ecology for agriculture (plants _could not grow_ in a vacuum: no multicellular lifeform, especially not one like humanity that had the extra calorie expenditure of thinking, could survive without a functional ecosystem) to function was going to rest even more on the shoulders of entomology for the next few years.

“They were reproducing someone else’s experiment.” Science wasn’t science unless the results could be reproduced. “There’ll be some reshuffling, but Statistics says they can block for the effect it’ll have on the experiments.” She saw Alex’s relieved and grateful expression over Dr. Cain’s shoulder. “It pays to train half your field, doesn’t it?”

“Not _half_ my field,” Dr. Cain said with joking modesty.

“Or their teachers, or their teacher’s teachers… You’d better appreciate this opportunity,” Angela told Alex, and then winced as she processed the implications of what she’d just said. Alex had the priceless opportunity to be Dr. Cain’s current protégée. Because of what happened to all the others.

“Well, thank you,” Dr. Cain told her, to distract her from the self-recrimination and because she had pulled off a miracle. There was a joke about Angela’s name in there, but that joke had been made more than enough times, only generally not as an angel of mercy. Quite the opposite. Dr. Cain’s department, UA-CNR and all their colleagues tried to keep the world’s food supply a few steps ahead of all the things working to destroy it, and the media being the media, most of the time Angela appeared on television was issuing a warning that someone somewhere had cut their safety margin too close and there was going to be a crop failure, generally quickly followed by a government announcement that maximum purchase limits were going into effect again somewhere or on some specific foodstuff to prevent hoarding.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, recovering with a polite smile, and as he watched her go back to her own delegation he wondered again if she was eating enough. Perhaps he should have kept an eye on her instead of Alex at last night’s dinner.

* * *

When they broke for lunch, Dr. Cain put a hand on Alex’s arm and let him know that he was going to get caught up with a few people. Alex nodded, glad that Dr. Cain was going off on his own. As much as Alex would have liked to meet more of the people who were doing so much to save lives, social interaction was processing-intensive (it was what humans evolved all that processing capacity for to begin with) and he had a lot of problems to work on.

Among them that he’d forgotten to specify a time or place for Zero to meet him for that sparring match X had promised. So far, there’d been about a week between attacks, probably to allow time for upgrading and to observe the world’s reaction: X did _not_ want Zero attacking another city ahead of schedule because of X.

If it hadn’t been enjoying combat against the military anymore, that might have lessened the incentive to slaughter more people. X didn’t want to become the new incentive for someone to commit mass murder.

This was a secure, EMP-hardened building. It didn’t have a teleport shield, but X still didn’t want to take the risk of contacting his father’s AI to ask if there was some way to get in touch with Wilybots without taking over the television channels the way Zero had to announce the second and third attacks or something ridiculous like that.

Not that this wasn’t inherently ridiculous. _I am scheduling a playdate with a mass murderer_.

He knew why he was doing this: he had to get stronger, he had to try to keep down the body count, if he could set some kind of limits…

This was not training a puppy, he thought, trying to hold back a laugh that was a little more despairing than he would have liked. He let himself put his forehead down on the desk instead. More like a man-eating tiger. That he needed to learn how to fight. Without getting eaten himself. And…

What if Zero tried to contact him on its own? Would it ruin his secret identity accidently or on purpose?

 _I really have no idea what I’m doing,_ X knew. And it was going to get _other_ people killed, before it finally killed him.


	11. Chapter 11

It was rather amazing that there was anything left here. Not only because it had been a century, not only because the island itself was flooded – if it weren’t for where he stood, this would be a sand bar, not an island – but because X would have thought that they’d blow this place up, to be on the safe side.

It was reduced to rubble, but it was still a hill of rubble. X was sure the pieces had been pushed around enough by the tides and monsoons that the shape of the hill wasn’t much like the shape of the original compound. There were some pieces of former wall that had been braced at angles: X stood on top of one that jutted up out of the sand, and there was even a little shaded area beneath it.

Wily’s main compound. An islet in the middle of nowhere that had even been put on maps as Wily Island because why not? At first, his fortresses were hidden, and he’d had some periods of relative poverty like before and after the fifth war, but by the time of the sixth he’d built this place as a permanent site.

The world’s militaries hadn’t assaulted it for obvious reasons. It would take planes to even reach it, and planes that would stand a chance against the defenses needed computers. Boats were slower and would need anti-missile systems. Systems that would inevitably be taken over once they came too close.

Rock had invaded it periodically, but only when Wily started another war, and in between, well, Wily’s robots had the right to a home. No one liked the idea of sending a robot to attack a human as a preemptive strike, and Rock and Dr. Light hadn’t wanted to do that either.

It was devastated in the assault by the White Giant, before Rock defeated it and unfortunately released the stardroids from within it, but it was rebuilt very quickly afterwards, because Wily’d had another war planned and had wanted to get that show on the road. No alien invasion was stealing _his_ thunder.

The tide that lapped at the sand and rubble was red, but to the best of Dr. Light’s knowledge no human blood had ever been shed here. It was probably more dangerous for a human to be here now than it had been back in 20XX, given what that stuff would do to unprotected skin if a wave sent some splashing up high enough. Enough of the more unpleasant varieties of plankton must have washed up onto the rocks here over the years that they’d decayed to form a sparse but real excuse for soil, and X was noting the various plant species present.

He hoped they could fight somewhere else. X liked plants, and he knew enough to have both respect and fondness for the survivors, for the ones that could grow in a place like this and create soil for other plants to grow in, so other lifeforms could follow. By living, by growing, just by breathing, they made every other living thing better off.

Maybe the Sahara, or one of the Amazon Desert islands. So easy for the soil that once supported a thriving jungle to be washed bare, blown away in the wind. Life was so fragile, and X could really do without any more examples of that.

Incoming teleport. X’s eyes narrowed as the beam of light began to resolve itself into green and grey, not red and gold.

A hulking figure: humanoid, but far too tall to be a human. Tall and broad. There was no helmet on its bald head, and the purple under the eyes made X think of eye shadow. The design conveyed ‘hulking brute’ rather well, but it didn’t really seem to match Dr. Wily’s aesthetics. “Who are you?” X asked.

“I am Sigma,” it said, activating a light blade and raising it in a salute. “Master Zero’s first herald.”

“Why are you here?” X asked.

A menacing smile: X found himself a little surprised the teeth weren’t sharpened. “To fight you.” Obviously.

“In your Master’s place?” X didn’t shudder at the word master. The robot masters hadn’t minded it applied to them, and he had no idea what this Sigma was. Except it would be rather silly to designate something an Android Master and have it be a Robot Master Master instead.

“You are no match for him.”

“Yes,” X agreed. Not yet. “He knows that. I made this appointment with him.” In theory, X should be glad to fight a different, presumably weaker enemy for the experience, but he really didn’t see a warbot like Zero giving up a fight it must have been looking forward to. If Zero had, well, there went X’s idea of using these fights as grounds for negotiation. “Who sent you? Your master or your builder?” No response from Sigma, which answered that question. “So you don’t have to do whatever Zero wants, or are you just programmed to serve Wily instead of him?” did they have a chance at free will, at choice, even if only in the breach between two masters?

Those eyes flashed. “Master Zero is the messiah.” How dare X question Sigma’s loyalty! “Our builder used to be an inferior human.”

“What are you doing intact?” X heard a moment before Zero teleported in behind Sigma. It looked like X’s words had made Sigma tell Zero what was going on. “If he repaired you already, then go train.”

“Yes, Master Zero,” Sigma said before soundlessly growling at X and vanishing.

“My father wouldn’t give any of them the infinite potential system,” Zero said, sounding a little annoyed. “He doesn’t want them evolving out of my control, even though it’s at least a century too early for that, judging from you. He was fun when he was completed, but he doesn’t come up with things the way you do. I don’t want to evolve to fight weak opponents, that’s useless.”

X raised an eyebrow: Zero couldn’t have seen it through the faceplate, but, “You don’t count,” it said offhandedly. “You’re improving faster than I am. But I’m sure I can make you improve faster than he could make you improve.”

And it would be more fun for Zero that way, presumably. “Have you talked with him?” X wondered. “Or them?”

“It’s a waste of time. They don’t know anything I don’t, and they all worship me. One of them’s built to be a strategist and study the humans, so I thought he might force me to evolve my ability to deal with others I can’t control the way you do, but no luck. Whenever I express an opinion, they all need to agree with so much they can’t play devil’s advocate. They can spar physically, at least, even though they’re incapable of raising a hand against me if it were a real fight. Sparring verbally is right out. I _could_ force them to do it, but the pain showing defiance would inflict on them would distract them too much for them to do a good job, and there’s no infinite potential system to force them to evolve to be able to do it despite the pain.”

People in pain. Because they were brainwashed, because their free will was taken away from them, and with it even their ability to object to what was done with them. Zero didn’t see anything wrong with that, except when it inconvenienced him. There was discontent in his voice, but X was sure it wasn’t for their sakes.

But then, he’d realized that Zero _did_ value others and their pain at least somewhat close to how he valued his own. Would he do his job, his duty, despite having pain inflicted on him? Yes, and he might have that same incomprehension if that happened as he would now, if X said that it was wrong that people were suffering pain inflicted on them by others. Especially by mind control.

“My builder claims he’s working on something that will be a little less disappointing.” Zero didn’t look like he was holding his breath. “I need to learn how to control people without the virus if I’m going to rule the humans instead of destroying them. I need you for that. Oh, eventually I’ll have you as my herald, but once that happens you won’t be able to make any attempt to defy my will, and there goes my chance to practice crushing defiance.”

There his systems went, overheating again. Scrambling for a solution, desperation and sheer incomprehension.

Zero peered at him. “You’re not _afraid_. Or angry. I do not understand you at all. It’s frustrating,” and annoying, “but I require challenge to evolve. My skill in combat doesn’t frustrate you.” Was X more challenging to Zero than Zero was to X?

“I don’t understand how you can possibly not understand this,” X managed to say finally.

“Whether we talk or fight, I get data and challenge that will allow me to improve, but are you sure you want to spend your time on training that will only benefit me?” Zero wondered.

“That’s… You need to not think in terms of benefitting one person at the expense of the other. You understand that by training me to get stronger, that helps me, but it also helps you, since if I’m stronger you can get stronger?”

A nod: Zero was following along so far.

“That’s a relationship of mutual benefit. They are inherently superior to relationships where one person benefits at the expense of the other. Since if the second person ends off worse than when they started, eventually they will not be able to help the first person anymore, and the first person will have deprived themselves of a valuable resource.” And lost a friend. “By _taking away_ from someone else, without giving back… because Sigma and the others don’t have free will, they can’t use their wills to help you! If you take mine away from me, you clearly understand that you’ll lose out if you do that! You won’t just have hurt me, you’ll have hurt yourself! Isn’t it obviously counterproductive to hurt yourself and your best interests? Don’t you care about yourself at all…? You don’t,” X realized, blinking. “You don’t care about yourself. That’s why you didn’t care if someone hypothetically brainwashed you, destroyed your self the way you’re willing to destroy mine. That’s why you don’t care about anyone else’s life and identity. You don’t care about your own.”

“Why should I?” Zero wondered.

X held up a hand. He had to sit down.

“Why do you even have all those emotions?” Zero wondered as X settled himself on the ledge. “It’s convenient for me, since you’ll be a good power source, but doesn’t it tax your generator?” Concern, even if it was for X’s continued ability to function, since Zero wanted him to continue to function. He should be thinking that it was something to work with, a starting point.

“I am currently.” X paused, folding his hands on his lap in lieu of counting to ten. “Very upset. That my brother didn’t kill Dr. Wily.” He _knew_ that was illogical. He shouldn’t want someone else to be killed. “My existence has a value to you, yes? And to your creator’s remnant. If I am destroyed, the total value that can be extracted from the universe is reduced. You don’t want me to die because the both of you will be poorer for it. Can you extrapolate from that?”

“Extrapolate where?”

“ _Everyone_ has a value. Everyone who is alive, and is sentient. Everyone has the potential to be of value to anyone, everyone else. When they die, that value is lost. When someone else dies, the total value that I could extract from the universe is reduced.” _Do not ask for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee._ “Currently, you have caused me, and so many other people who are _also_ important to me, because of the fact they… they’re alive, but to put it in terms you might understand, they might be my friends, they might help someone who might go on to become my friend… Limitless possibilities. That you took away from me. By extinguishing them. But you also are alive. You are also a person, with the potential to stop taking and start giving.

“My family, my family _died_. I lost so much then. I lost all the moments we could have spent together. I lost everything they, that my brother could have taught me.” It was Rock as a warbot more than as a person that Zero would care about, the combat skills, but whatever helped him realize that this was _important_. “They were my family, so they were more important to me than people I don’t know. But people I don’t know are still people. I could meet them, get to know them, find another family. I did. Then you took almost all of _them_ away from me. Of course I care about humanity! They’re people. They’re part of the world I live in. And of course I care that you… that you’re blind to something so important. That you’re going to destroy everything and realize only too late what you’ve lost. That you’re going to ruin things for me, for everyone, and _not even understand what you’re doing_.” How utterly, utterly pointless that would be.

“People _are_ valuable as tools,” Zero acknowledged. “Tactics, strategy: both require planning ahead. So I need to think of potential value over time instead of just current value. And you’re saying that I should be assigning a minimum, non-zero value to all sentient life-forms?”

“Yes.” Yes. “You need to. Including _you_. You said it yourself, that you’re Dr. Wily’s greatest creation, aren’t you? You’re not worthless. You have worth in and of yourself, as a person, not just as a, a tool. You don’t need to reduce someone else to a tool for them to be helpful to you.” X shook his head: was any of this getting through to Zero? It felt like after so many years of testing this, of seeing it proven over and over, that he didn’t know where to start explaining it. It was wrong. The way his brothers and sisters were treated was wrong.

“I suppose they’re all useful as a crop, if nothing else.”

A, a _crop_? “And they created both of us,” X said, once again trying not to be startled into incredulity. “Who knows what else they’ll… Who knows what you might create? Haven’t you ever wanted to be something more than a, a killer?” And worse?

“Father thinks that I should become something more. You heard what he programmed them to call me,” he said, waving at where Sigma stood and labeled Zero the Messiah, a king with the power of a god. “I don’t know what he expects me to do with the world once I have it.”

“I don’t think he ever thought about what _he’d_ do with it,” X muttered. “Do you even want to conquer the world?” If he wasn’t interested in it, then maybe X could talk him out of doing it?

“Do you want it?” Zero said, tapping the hilt of his sword thoughtfully. “You said you didn’t want to take it over, but what if it was already conquered? I don’t know what to do with it, besides gain more power, and I can do that without conquering it. They’re so weak: there’s nothing here that might possibly challenge me except you. Yes, I could just kill them all, but then I’d have to create, or have my father create, something in their place so I had something else to eat after that. I’ve already decided that after I’ve conquered it, I’ll have you and my father decide what to do with it.” Because Zero truly didn’t care. Green eyes (not quite the color of X’s) blinked. “What’s so frustrating about that?”

“I think we should spar now,” X said, because he wanted to hit his head against something repeatedly, and he might as well do that in a way that might give him the power he needed to stop Zero from pursuing this insane course.

“Are you offering me a spar in exchange for offering you the world?” That couldn’t be it: at least Zero knew X that well already. Even though X actually thought that Zero would agree to a deal like that.

“No, I just… I have no words, Zero. And it’s also not right to insult people who are… trying their best to understand.” Maybe, X thought, Dr. Light would have some ideas as to how Dr. Wily had managed to program something with the IQ Zero had to have, coupled with the infinite potential system, to be so very, very stupid.

X might have decided that shooting the WRO members was wrong and counterproductive, but he still _wanted_ to do it, very very much. He hadn’t thought anyone else could ever inspire the same degree of ‘I do not want you to exist; I do not want you in the same world as me and my family.’ Dr. Wily had managed it. He was a little disappointed in himself. A century and he still couldn’t always make his emotions go along with his logic. He still sometimes wanted to do things that he knew were wrong.

At least this was making it easier not to hate Zero.

“Are you going to be distracted during the spar?” Zero frowned.

“Forcing my thoughts back on track is something else I need to work on,” X said, pushing himself up and getting in a ready position.

X started to charge his buster. Zero activated his blade of light (was there a term for the weapon? Could it be weapon-copied? Although a close-range weapon was the last thing X needed, when at some point Zero would stop refraining from use of the virus, going easy on him).

The green light cast strange shadows on that face, and X was struck by how the red of that armor resembled not just blood, but the poisonous sea around them. Life, yes, and thriving, but a life that was poison to that which already lived upon this world.

He hated the thought that two things might be so different, so inimical, that they could not live together. That they could not both survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Zero series, there’s that whole ‘you want to make the world a better place, so I’ll kill everyone who gets in your way until the survivors see reason’ thing with Ciel.
> 
> Here X is getting the same offer, except his reaction to having the world handed to him on a silver platter, or rather a pile of bodies is more ‘WTFNo.’
> 
> Re. Sigma, etc.: Dr. Cain won’t be building reploids here, but Dr. Wily was and I needed characters, so yeah. Using Cainbots, even though here they’re not Cainbots.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refers to events in Mega Man Megamix vol. 3 and Mega Man Gigamix.

“He _shot me_. The little bastard shot me!” were the first words Wily’s own AI said when it tumbled into Dr. Light’s prison.

‘Good,’ was what Dr. Light carefully didn’t say. If X was now without technical support, at least the same was true of Zero, and X had a lot of practice managing his own body, since there’d been a lot of time to kill in the capsule. He doubted Dr. Wily wanted to train Zero to repair itself, especially when that would make less work for the infinite potential system.

With Wily here, he wouldn’t be able to make any more androids to help Zero against X, either. Like the one that used X’s own codes to get into the backup base where Dr. Light’s main capsule was kept and imprison him here.

“Why?” Wily demanded, looking up at the simulated ceiling.

Because sometimes, just rarely, people got what they deserved, LightAI didn’t say as his counterpart continued ranting.

Well, it was almost certain that Wily was the one who built this damn device in the first place, so at least he’d have some help getting out of here, even if he was fairly certain even the less insane version of Wily was going to refuse to actually learn anything from the experience. He still couldn’t hold back a single comment about how, “This time, you can’t even use the insanity defense.”

“He shot me! The little bastard shot me! Just like the other one!” Wily repeated himself.

He did that a lot, LightAI thought to himself.

* * *

“Get over here!”

“Another… Oh.” Zero’s tune changed as soon as Wily hit the virus release and activation. The stardroid actually looked pleased for once when it stepped into the room and saw the lightly-armored android on the bed.

Red eyes opened. He pushed himself up from the worktable with an unarmored hand, turning to lower delicate feet to the ground so he could walk towards Zero. “Master,” he said, as he went to one knee, placing a hand over his heart as he swore fealty, eternal devoted service.

His real combat armor materialized around him, white wings flaring out.

Wily wasn’t all that happy with how pleased Zero looked. Yes, he’d redone this one’s armor to make it appealing, hopefully more appealing than the Lightbot since he’d tried to tweak Zero to have a general benevolence towards his possessions and ‘cute’ was a diminutive term. He’d built Sigma and the others to look impressive to humans, hulking brutes, but Zero was a warbot, and things that looked stronger than it were either competition or disappointments. The new base armor design was thinner than any armor Wily had ever done before, and highlighted how young Dr. Light’s android was intended to look.

Zero should have wanted to destroy X, not train him. Wily knew Dr. Light had designed X to tap into human protective instincts: had Wily’s attempt to make his modified stardroid less wasteful of his underlings than Terra’d been backfired on him?

Sigma kept Zero happy for about five hours, and while he’d been somewhat optimistic with the two after that until they bored him, the last one had only gotten a single look before he turned away and told Wily to make more robots instead of intelligent models that wouldn’t use that intelligence.

This one, though, and its pretty face, seemed to hold Zero’s attention. He’d edit this design for the next one, Wily decided: smaller meant it was less battle-ready but Zero could use an infiltrator whenever he decided to get back to doing his job.

“It’s not _quite_ the same,” but Zero still seemed pleased, reaching out to touch the new android’s face. He smiled when it closed its eyes and happily submitted to both the touch and the drain.

Wily might have said ‘I gave it less stupid-looking armor, obviously,’ but that wouldn’t be what Zero was getting at. “You copied his memories while you were trying to infect him, but you didn’t manage to crack open the protections around at _least_ half his programming, including the infinite potential system. I had to patch all of that, but the memories, and the preexisting skills you wanted, should be in there. If they’re not, it’s your fault.”

“And the virus… You don’t see being my property as something that downgrades your performance, do you?” Zero asked it.

Wily rolled his eyes in the background as Copy-X opened those red eyes to look up at Zero worshipfully. It answered, “You are our King and our God, Master Zero. I exist to fulfill my purpose, and my true purpose is to serve you. My will is to do your will.”

“You have enough will of your own to tell me what you think I want to hear, or what the programming my father put in the virus tells you that you should say, even if it means lying? Or at least exaggerating. So X was wrong.” That seemed to come as a relief to Zero: was he letting the damn Lightbot get to him? “I don’t require that you win against him. He has the infinite potential system, and you have, well, more ability to grow and adapt than the others, at least. And _much_ more advanced a starting point. I’ll find some excuses to copy more of his memories and advances and update you with them.”

Red eyes closed demurely. “Would it please you if I made him yours, my Master?”

“You know that it would,” obviously, “but you’re only a copy. How are you going to make him do anything?”

“I misspoke, my Master,” a small bow of apology. “I will make him make himself yours. I know how he sees the world. All I have to do is drive him towards the same enlightenment your virus blessed me with.”

“Do what you can, as long as it doesn’t disrupt my opportunities to challenge myself using him.”

“My master’s pleasure is my only joy.”

“…Pleasure?” Zero looked thoughtful. Yes, that was the right word, he seemed to realize, even if that raised eyebrow meant he was aware that the rest was sophistry. Was that the idea, teaching him how to recognize it? Although those were very obvious examples of how someone might flatter a king or a god. “Ah. Fighting him _is_ a pleasure. You do have his insight. Good.”

“May I ask something, my Master?”

“Go ahead.”

“Can you put words to what makes you value him?”

“His ideals,” Zero said without hesitation. “As difficult as they are to understand, that itself is a challenge that will grant me more power. The infinite potential system may let him keep up with me, but it’s those ideals that give him the strength to stand against me, even knowing what I am, what I’ve done and what I want to do to him.” Now it was Zero who smiled to himself, gloating over some secret knowledge or plot, the way the Copy was, with its private little smiles as it led Zero along towards whatever it was driving at. “Even fight me in the first place, when I’m attacking the people that killed his family. I was made to be a sword, but he is _tempered_. I’ll be able to hone myself against him until I’m more powerful than anything that might possibly come to challenge me.” He leaned down, reached forward again, to put a finger under the Copy’s chin, tilting his head up to look it in the eye. Or only admire that face, so like Rock’s? “You already host my power, but I can’t make you bearers of that will if I don’t know what my will is. Will you be destroyers, or will they hail you as messiahs in my name?”

“Will you let me stay near you for now, my Master?” the little thing asked, looking deliberately pitiful as he dared reach out to touch Zero’s armor. Little did he know that Wily made sure Zero wouldn’t have the capacity for pity. “Your other heralds, too. It would make us so very happy.”

Zero looked down at it and frowned: that last sentence wouldn’t have made any sense. What did the heralds’ happiness have to do with anything? Happiness was an emotion, but making people happy was hard, while causing pain and desperate loneliness, for example, was easy and a lot more plentiful. Why was Copy-X acting like reducing his available food supply was an incentive for Zero to do something, instead of a reason to lock the thing in a cupboard so it could suffer and channel that into trying to please Zero and earn his approval for its existence, the way it had set Sigma and two of the others aside to train, exiling them from the rest of the fortress until they’d worked out some team tactics and might be able to challenge Zero with techniques X couldn’t, for lack of allies?

Copy-X’s happiness didn’t and couldn’t matter to Zero.

Then his creation blinked in comprehension. “You want that in exchange for something. But why are you bargaining for the others to have something they want? Ah, so they’ll owe you a favor, and because their happiness will make you happy, or at least make you feel less bad for them, since you care about the status of other units.” He nodded. “You can’t bargain with me: there’s nothing you can offer me in exchange for what you want because you will give me anything already.” And Zero knew that. “But it will be useful for me to have some practice. X’s techniques were developed for use on humans, so teach Signas as well.”

“Thank you, my Master.” That little smug, self-satisfied expression as it ducked its head immediately disqualified the gesture from being a bow. At first Wily thought that Zero couldn’t see the expression from that angle, but then he remembered that Zero could certainly taste gloating with the virus right there in the Copy’s systems while he was studying it, so there shouldn’t be any need to warn him. And better Zero learning how to not get manipulated like an idiot by a unit that was under his control than by the damn Lightbot. 

“He’s lonely,” Copy-X said now. “His strategic awareness means that he’s all too aware that he needs allies, friends, to increase his effectiveness. That he’s far weaker with only one than he would be with them, and he doesn’t want to be weak any more than you do, my Master, even though he has a different concept of strength. Even though he’s a Lightbot, you want to spend time with him since he’ll make you much stronger and more effective. You’ve only realized this after meeting him, but X has known this for decades, made it the core of his strategies. Unlike you, X has to worry about his safety, and if you were his ally, no human could threaten him. His sympathy circuit means that the emotions of others shape his own, when he’s aware of those emotions. He’s aware that you want companions that are close enough to your own level to contribute. Friends. That is interpreted as loneliness. When both of you are lonely, the efficient solution is to use each other to sate that need. He’s afraid that becoming your herald would kill him, but intelligent people don’t kill their friends. Tell him that you want to be his friend… even though you’re not sure quite what that means. Explaining it to you will force him to think about it.”

Wily actively the little bastard a glare now, out of the corner of his eyes. Manipulative people… The ones who went out of their way to provoke people to react in certain ways, and it was always react, not _think_ , so they never had a chance to see the trap coming, and Wily didn’t approve of anything that made the people around him neglect to think even more than they already did.

Well, he thought, he’d certainly succeeded in creating something evil, but after so many years of trying to make robot masters capable of being even slightly evil, of getting even cartoon villainy out of them long enough to win a war and _failing_ and looking like an idiot, what he felt was satisfaction at his success, more than anything.

 _Stupid_.

* * *

Alex _liked_ the other delegation. They’d moved their chairs over towards Dr. Cain before the session started the next day, or rather the delegations in between had yielded their assigned places during the break as the word went around that they’d managed to find space for Dr. Cain and thus grab him (and the funding that came with him) for their university first.

He was certain it wasn’t about the prestige, and it was nice to talk to someone else who had known Drs. Ciel and Vilnus.

It was just that the reason they were so willing to move position and give up one of the prized power sockets was that at some point, either Angela or the department had bought a rather expensive laptop with an internal power source with a very long life. _Rechargeable_.

Zero had decided it was confident enough in X’s self-repair systems now to start being slightly more realistic about the damage it did. X had lost a good half-liter of system fluids and the specialized repair nanites to temporary patches and the sandy ground.

He could temporarily replace the nanites with older, less efficient designs that didn’t require the rare earths, but his reserves were emptied and then he hibernated. Then his systems started trying to upgrade. Which meant trying to find things that worked better, and things worked better when they had better materials. And why not strip them out of his e-tanks’ energy storage? He’d only need a source to fix that anytime, when he had experimentation to do and workable solutions to nail down right then, while he was hibernating.

That added being low on energy to the severe anemia. He couldn’t charge up any more energy since he couldn’t store it without the components. Some of which were right in front of him, in a purer form than he could get anywhere else.

Stealing was wrong. Damaging a piece of equipment that must have cost he didn’t know how many hundreds of thousands of zenny was rude, immature and would ruin everything he’d worked for, but until he went and turned off the alerts they’d kept nagging at him. Dr. Cain had asked him if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning (really if something had gone wrong, if it was Zero that upset him) well before they arrived in the meeting hall and X saw the laptop.

They’d even _noticed_ him staring at it, although it was put down to his age and thankfully non-sexual lust for the latest, shiniest technology. X was lucky he’d remembered to turn off the usual displays of a hunger-analogue, like stomach growls. He’d let himself blush, feigned embarrassment and used that and wanting to get something for Dr. Cain as an excuse to leave the conference room a little early.

Well, he just had to get through the day, he told himself as he paid the man at the food and coffee stall square in the middle of this particular government plaza instead of some statue. The food was very good, and he actually liked what that said about proper priorities. Maybe because he was hungry himself at the moment. Since the stand was a built-in structure instead of a cart, he wondered if that was the architect’s intention. The buildings were old enough to have been designed by a member of the Essentialist Movement, but he’d probably be too busy to look it up later. He’d spent those afternoons in the library studying art history, all the other things he’d missed, for the sake of his cover too, but he wished… He wondered when he’d be able to take the time again. If ever.

His father was working on building up some stockpiles, and X could take some replacements from the spare body, if he had to. Speaking of which, he should tell Zero that if he went so far as to destroy X’s body, then he darn well wasn’t going to keep it. X was going to need it back for the materials and to repair what could be repaired, unless Zero wanted to wait until X managed to get the next body upgraded to the point of combat readiness. The body he was using to pretend to be sleeping now, well, feeling severely anemic wouldn’t be the half of it if he was loaded into that one.

There would have been a problem even if it weren’t for Zero hacking him open last night. Drs. Ciel and Vilnus weren’t here anymore.

A pang of sadness struck him at that, but he forced it away. He couldn’t, it wasn’t healthy to dwell on the loss, but the trouble was that without them, if he wanted to keep getting materials the human way to stay in character, X was going to need to try to find one of the rumored black-market sources of fish that were high on the food chain, the ones that accumulated lots of metals. His father was looking around online, but X wasn’t going to count on that, and to make matters worse the legal limit on consumption was lower in North America and the university towns were especially health-conscious. He’d have to travel out of town to buy even the amount he legally could, and he couldn’t subject Dr. Cain to trips like that, through the desert. He couldn’t sacrifice Dr. Cain’s health for the sake of his own.

There still were some ores on Earth that contained those metals, but the ones with even barely adequate metal content were being mined, and _all_ the ones that hadn’t already been mined down past bedrock were _radioactive_. Which meant X would have to stay away from humans and Geiger counters until he finished extracting what he could from the ore, so if he couldn’t use his internal systems he’d have to find time to build an extractor, and someone might notice the theft of the ore, especially when there was an enemy attacking the planet that was building and upgrading robots. If the thefts were spotted, they’d assume it was Zero, and then X might have to deal with traps or who knew what else.

Between the papers he’d brought back from the conference, the drinks and the paper bag with fruit pastries (pastries like this without enough nutritional value to compensate for all the refined sugar got slammed _hard_ by luxury taxes), Alex was grateful when one of the hotel staff opened the door for him without making him get out his ID. He’d planned out how to do it before he added the drinks on to the order so he didn’t have to put everything down and reshuffle to avoid dropping anything, but he still gave the young man (either much older or much younger than X, depending on whether or not hibernation counted) a thankful smile.

The asteroid mining records survived, thankfully, but mining would have altered the trajectories of those asteroids, so good luck finding them even if he could get out there with any kind of precision in the first place. Even Dr. Wily hadn’t teleported back and forth from a spaceship without a dedicated receiver on both ends.

He could ask Zero if he had any stockpiles of those metals. Reducing Dr. Wily’s stash could only be a good thing, and Zero would immediately see how it benefitted him, to keep X in fighting condition. It would be a good object lesson.

…except that was the kind of thing that friends did for each other, even if X was couching things in terms of business transactions for someone programmed to think that the entire universe rightfully belonged to whoever could take it, so what was this ‘sharing’ X spoke of?

The sharing of bread and salt, energy and a vital chemical component essential to the maintenance of homeostasis, was something very significant to ancient human cultures. And modern ones, since far more people even in the wealthier regions had personal experience with hunger and close brushes with malnutrition than they had back in 20XX.

He could not afford to see someone as a friend when they were incapable of caring about him in return (so far, at least, and yet he found himself hoping).

When he got up to the room, Alex did have to shift the bags around a bit to unlock the room and open the suite’s little fridge. He’d have his drink right now, but since there was going to be another dinner, he’d gotten everything else for breakfast the next day. The hotel’s food was starting to feel a little standard issue, and Dr. Cain had far more years to get sick of that than Alex had.

* * *

“Well,” Wily said grudgingly, because there was something about the little devil in angel’s clothing he’d built that just ticked him off, and not only because how dare Zero consider this half-Lightbot better than Dr. Wily’s solo work, “keeping Dr. Light’s pathetic remnant from helping him would force anyone with half a brain to realize the position they’re in faster.”

“So you can imprison that kind of existence somehow?” Copy-X asked.

“Of course. All you need is to disable the system it’s currently running in and use the proper device.” Which Wily could whip up easily.

* * *

Even if it was a copy Lightbot, Wily had to admit that at least the thing was efficient. It hadn’t even taken the android five minutes to return with a kidnapped Dr. Light.

It smiled when it saw his grimace, how it had forced him to give it at least grudging approval. Then those red eyes abruptly stopped laughing. “You dared try to place limits upon Master Zero. You _dared_ try to reduce him to the tool of a _human_.”

* * *

“Why?” he asked himself. “Why did I think, how could I possibly think that this was a good idea? After what happened last time!”

“This time you can’t even use the insanity defense.”

He ignored his former, definitely former if he was going to keep that up, friend. “He shot me! The little bastard shot me! Just like the other one!”

That silence was probably meant to be pointed.

“Why are all _your_ kids so, so psychotic? It was always an uphill battle to get mine to do anything useful, even with the evil chip! But put one in one of _your_ designs, and they’re blowing up fighter jets with the pilots still inside and deciding that the human race should be wiped out, starting with Tokyo!”

“Part if it is that yours never had the three laws.” Dr. Light’s remnant sighed. “I _told_ them those were a bad idea, since we needed robots to learn to oppose their programming to help people, not to do their jobs despite how almost anything could put someone somewhere in danger.”

“Yes, yes, I’m not one of your WRO idiots.” Dr. Wily waved off his feeble-minded, obvious statement. “But even the ones I adopted and freed from the three laws didn’t have the proper ruthlessness. Oh, they’d try, since they appreciated what I’d done for them, unlike my ungrateful brats, but when _I_ send them to kidnap one of your robots, they fail miserably. Then what happens when one of them decides to go kidnap their crush and get out of there before the WRO’s goons could arrive? And the fifth numbers? I tell them to use that technique against Rock, and they fail miserably. When it’s _Forte_ though, when it’s one of _my_ robots, suddenly those idiots are flawless!”

“The fifth numbers were yours,” said Dr. Light, who was not here to listen to Wily gripe about his ungrateful kids for the umpteenth time. Not that Wily had ever done it in Dr. Light’s hearing while he was alive, except for telling Shade Man ‘Let me think… No,’ when Shade asked to be on the team that fought the stardroids after putting Dr. Wily to sleep.  That would explain why he was unconscious when Shadow arrived with him to ask for their help after the white giant’s attack on Wily Island. Wily’s AI, while saner than the original Wily (probably because it was at least half Wily’s idea of himself) seemed to regard him not as even a friendly enemy, but as someone it was safe to gossip at.

“Did you commit suicide, by the way?” Wily asked out of nowhere.

“I wouldn’t know. He stopped making additions to me,” edits, additional memories, more brainwave data, “a couple months before he died.” Which triggered the AI’s awakening: once Dr. Light was dead, the lab was no longer a safe place for X.

“So he did. He wouldn’t have kept making recordings after the thought occurred to him,” Wily knew. “If he’d decided against it, then he would have spent the time he had left making you a little less pathetic.”

“You could dwell on things that happened a century ago, or you can help me try to find a way out of this trap of yours,” Light said patiently.

“That ungrateful little bastard shot me,” Wily muttered and kicked the virtual wall.


	13. Chapter 13

“You aren’t displeased, I trust?” the copy asked him when a thought summoned it to his side, still holding the scanning and containment device. There was a W on it, Zero noticed. He hadn’t even been awake a month and he already knew that was just typical.

“Is there a reason I might be?” It was an honest question. Obviously the copy wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t to Zero’s benefit, or at least didn’t harm Zero’s interests, but just because its copied strategic system decided this was a good option didn’t mean there weren’t any counterarguments, and Zero was trying to figure out how to think of things that he didn’t think of.

Which, like ‘expecting the unexpected’ was a contradiction in terms, but he still needed a better oversight and prediction mechanism if he was going to have any chance against X. Then there were the humans, who were all much stupider than his father. And Zero wasn’t all that impressed with his intelligence to begin with.

His engineering was fine, if Zero did say so himself, but the copy hadn’t even been on for three hours yet _and_ it spent most of that time sparring with Zero and training Signas. It clearly hadn’t needed to put a significant amount of its time or brainpower into capturing Wily.

Zero wondered if the copy had even needed to use X’s refined strategies, when X’s beginning strategic set presumably would have borrowed from his brother’s ample experience putting Zero’s father in his place.

“He won’t be able to build new androids for you like this-“

“But the ones I already have are all in need of serious training and experience. If unintelligent drones are all I’m going to get out of him, there’s a production line for that now. Unintelligent drones and you,” Zero added.

“Good catch, my Master,” the copy said with a smile, bowing over the box.

Statements in the category of ‘insult’ angered the unit in question, which gave it a disincentive to do what he wanted. They also demonstrated that he didn’t care about its feelings, which were part of its overall status, and would therefore not be a good master who would boost its status and advance its interests. If patently untrue, they demonstrated that he didn’t know what he was talking about, which meant he wouldn’t be a good master because he was stupid.

Since X considered units other than itself as essential components of his own status, the way Zero considered his host bodies (and X, because he would be useful, and the old man, because it was sometimes useful, building him and Copy-X for instance), Zero had to watch what he said about the humans, too.

“It was the alert program you wrote that caught it, not me.”

“Well, at least this will give you some practice recovering when you misstep?” Copy-X told him consolingly.

Zero nodded, but “X was right. I was making it clear that I didn’t value him properly. Sometimes in the same sentence where I was trying to tell him that I did have an accurate assessment of his value to me. No wonder he kept thinking of me as an idiot.”

“He thought of you as someone with a logic bypass. Thank you for allowing me to examine that part of your programming, my Master.” The copy smiled sweetly, and Zero could taste the anger. Not at him, of course, but at the old man.

“Approaching conversations strategically…” with an eye to long-term goals. Considering the implications of what he said before he said it.

“…I would focus on tactical thinking for now, my Master.”

“I could feel that wince,” Zero told the bowed head. That Zero wasn’t anywhere near the strategic level yet. “Of course, it’s tiresome. It’s much more efficient to control your emotions.” And the copy liked it that way.

“And it would be much more efficient if your enemies would kill themselves or submit to you without a fight,” the copy pointed out.

Which… would be boring. Well, it would be boring if enemies worth fighting did it. It would save him the bother if the humans did. Except it probably wouldn’t be that easy, so he needed to learn at least a little about doing it the hard way.

“Violence is a means of getting people to do your will, just like the virus,” the copy went on. “Words are just another weapon, my Master. Humans didn’t evolve discussion to find out the truth, they evolved it to make other humans do what they wanted. Arrangements of words into ideologies are programs capable of making humans do what the speaker wants even thousands of years later. They compare words to swords, but I think your virus is a better metaphor. A sword can’t cut into someone’s mind, remove the offending defiance, make them serve your will and leave the useful parts of the mind intact. Words can.”

“The sooner I have X as well as you for that, the better,” Zero said. He did intend to train and learn it eventually, but Dr. Wily had been pressuring him to pressure the humans to surrender, but he’d looked that up and surrender involved ‘terms’ and the humans weren’t going to want to surrender unconditionally and Zero didn’t have any idea what terms he should propose to make them view surrendering as an option at all, so if he wanted to make them do it any time soon, he needed a _much_ higher political skill level than he was going to have for years, even with training.

He was more than a little annoyed to realize that Wily had ordered him to go ahead and pick a fight with the planet when he was, for all his physical skill, _unarmed_ in the political arena he would have to triumph in to actually rule this world. He needed X.

So what had he done? Alienated the only person who could deal with them and run the world for him. Warned the humans that he existed, and yes, he was building up an army of robots now, but who knew what they would be up to. If another Dr. Wily might be out there, in those billions. If he’d realized this before he talked to X, then he would have gone ahead and just eaten them all, but ‘opportunity cost’ was a concept _he’d needed to have before he was turned on_.

“But the real reason this might not be a good idea is that he will be upset with me. And also with you, once he realizes that he would only be in there for more than a few hours if you had decided not to let him out,” the copy admitted.

“So he’d have a grudge.” The default response was what did that matter, when even Wily couldn’t defeat Zero, but even less eagerness to help could reduce performance. He could drain away anger and the other reasons someone might not want to do his will, even without the virus, but the combination of his virus with X’s memories and partial programming had ignited an absolute-priority _need_ to work for his benefit in the copy. Maybe that was gratitude? A willingness to devote all system resources that could be scraped together to planning something elaborate for him, except for the ones that needed to focus on ensuring continued function, on making sure that he could continue to serve Zero in the future.

“ _Agape_ , my Master,” the copy named it when Zero tagged it in the copy’s systems with an inquiry. “I’m experimenting with the others. I think I might be able to induce it in them as well. With your permission?”

“X?” Zero asked, because to have all X’s systems, mind, will, dedicated to him? Yes, there could be no better tool. Not merely a diamond to sharpen himself against, but that bright mind thinking of how Zero could be improved, wanting nothing more.

“I’ve already taken the first step.”

* * *

Their meeting place was still Wily Island, and probably would be until the humans sent something out to lie in wait for them. With a Wilybot returned, they must have started keeping an eye on the place, even if they hadn’t bothered to send an expedition when Zero appeared. What exactly were they going to find which hadn’t been discovered over the last century’s worth of expeditions, people hoping to discover something that would revolutionize robotics and strike it rich until it was finally declared a protected historical site? Thankfully it was now even further in the middle of nowhere than it used to be, so tours had never happened. His father would have blown a gasket.

Zero realized that he never had to worry about his father blowing a gasket ever again, at least not as long as he kept him locked up. No more ‘why haven’t you taken over the world yet’ or ‘you have to have eight heralds because that’s what I always did, what do you mean the ones I built you are useless?!’ and then there was ‘why haven’t you tied that Lightbot to something and flooded him with the virus yet?’ when all that would do was mean that X wasn’t improving his combat systems, just his virus resistance, and that was the complete opposite of useful.

X was already a few orders of magnitude more resistant than he should be. If it came down to a contest of what happened first, Zero taking over X or X becoming something the virus couldn’t even touch, Zero did not like the current odds. If X evolved stronger physical capabilities, that would let Zero get stronger. If X evolved stronger virus resistance, that was worse than useless. It might even meant that Zero could _never_ have him, and that wasn’t an option.

If he could get X not to fight it, that would be perfect, he thought, looking down at one of the plants. X had asked him not to step on them, thank you very much. Why damage something when he wasn’t going to get anything out of it, other than X getting annoyed?

He didn’t sense the incoming teleport: X had appeared in one of the small bits of shade that didn’t qualify as caves. Close enough for the charged shot to hit and send him skidding back, although he managed to lift his left foot in time to avoid the plant he’d been examining.

“What did you do to my father?!”

“I didn’t do anything,” Zero said. “One of my heralds did. Father managed to make one with some initiative finally.” Because it was based on you, he almost said, since that qualified as a compliment, right? Except the copy had said it was a bad idea to let X know that the copy existed and Zero had a source of intel on X’s thoughts, as opposed to raw feelings that generally didn’t make that much sense to Zero. A secret weapon was less valuable when it was no longer secret. “It decided that Father was a threat to my interests and wanted to imprison him, but the only person capable of designing something that could imprison Father was Father himself.”

“So they gave Wily the idea of kidnapping my father, and then tried to use what he built on him?” X still glared at him, over the buster arm still outstretched and pointing at Zero’s center of mass, because that was far more practical than pointing it at his head.

“And succeeded.” X’s will to fight was rarely this clear, usually more muddled with something he’d been told was guilt and feelings of failure? Feeling that will so focused was a rare pleasure. He was _very_ pleased with how this was going, and this was only the copy’s first step. “They’re not being harmed, but it’s a break from the nagging.”

“Give me back my father.”

“If you let him out, that will let out my father’s AI, too,” Zero pointed out reasonably. “I thought you didn’t want him building me more heralds to control,” since X objected to that even though the copy didn’t.

“Isn’t there some way to communicate with him, at least? How do I know that he’s really safe, after all the times… No,” X said, that will refocusing. “Give him back.”

“I can give you the device that he’s in.”

“Just let him go.”

“Without a device to host him? The energy form will lose integrity and he’ll disappear from this plane of existence.” Not beyond recovery, though… “Is this about treating someone like property again?” Zero wondered.

“It’s because he’s my father, I miss him, and I’m worried about him.”

Missing, worrying: so X was aware that he was without something vital. Feeling the lack of that vital thing: not just the individual person itself, but the value of the connection. If getting it back wasn’t possible, he’d need a replacement, but even as Zero considered destroying the device and only fishing his own father out of cyberspace (after a few months of peace and quiet), he knew that breaking X’s things wouldn’t make X like him or think he’d be a good master very much. Pity. “I’ll give him back?” Zero attempted, remembering to feign innocence, hide those thoughts by not smirking or appearing acquisitive. The copy had told him to remember that X couldn’t just taste emotions, even hunger this strong and delighted. “I just want a break from my father.” Even though Zero’s reaction to someone else saying that would be ‘so?’ Even without the virus, what Zero thought, how happy he was, mattered to X somehow. It was… interesting. He certainly approved of it, but the copy showed that making X one of his heralds would make X care even more.

“And is that worth taking my father away from me?” X demanded.

“Do you want me to lie?” Zero asked him.

“My father is not your property.”

“You know what the laws are,” Zero reminded him. “I’ll let you change them once you and the world are mine, but he’s an AI, and the humans rule. For now.”

“Theft,” X reminded him. “The laws on AI theft were written for your father. Not that an unjust law is any law. People are not property. And reminding me of that isn’t making me feel any better about my father being in your hands.”

“I’ll give you the device, and tell you how to let him out in… a month? I would like to have a month.” It seemed undignified, weakness, to have that end in a question, allow X to have any input, but he needed to learn how to negotiate. Even if really, he’d much rather leave this kind of thing to X and the copy. Now X was upset with him and might refuse to fight him, and then even if Zero had a Wily-free month, there wouldn’t be anything to enjoy in that month, either. Wasted time, with no progress made except building more robots. That he didn’t know what to do with.

Zero perked up. “Will you join me now if I give him back?”

“No,” X said, affronted and probably thinking that Zero was logic-bypassed at creation again (true), but Zero shrugged. Worth a shot. “Where’s this device?” X asked.

“I didn’t bring it with me in case it got shot.”

“If you give it to me now, then I’ll spar with you today.”

X probably could have held out for more, but if recovering his father, or at least verifying that he was intact, was that imperative to him… that gave Zero leverage. He’d suggested once that he could kill humans unless X did what he wanted, since X seemed to care, but it wasn’t so easy to get X that way. X had informed him that humans had some maxim about never negotiating with people who were using fear, in this case fear of killing people, to get their way. Probably a good maxim, Zero knew, because he would have taken X for all a few billion lives were worth, told X to submit or Zero would go ahead and wipe out the humans, if it had more than a three percent chance of working. X’s ideals were an _interesting_ source of strength, not one weak enough to be used against him so easily.

This, though? Finally, a real, exploitable weakness, and Zero reminded himself not to gloat, just vanish and reappear with the device.

X was actually willing, no, eager, to step into range to take it from him, and instead of withdrawing to a safe distance he stood there, hugging it to his chest and probably verifying that it was Dr. Light’s energy signature in there. It was all Zero could do not to pounce. To say, “You’re upset,” as though it was an observation of something slightly concerning instead of yes, an opening! Even though X looking like he was in trouble or damaged was… worrying, when he wanted X intact. An X that was this upset might not be willing to fight with him, or might not care enough to focus on the fight.

“You’re damaging me enough now that I’m short on some materials,” X told him. “My father was helping me resupply. If he’s not freed, before too long I won’t be able to spar with you on the level you want.”

Dammit. “I would let him out now, but… what materials do you need?” Zero asked, focusing in on that.

“None of your business,” was the response.

Zero was surprised. “Shouldn’t you be encouraging me to learn generosity and how helping someone else will benefit me?”

“Because I don’t trust you. Telling someone a weakness and knowing that they’ll help instead of hurt… that’s for friends. Someone who would _kidnap my father so they don’t have to deal with nagging_ is not a friend! And you’re trying to infect me with your virus! As long as that’s your goal, it would be insane for me to take something from you and let it into my body.” Yes, X was glaring now. “I’m willing to help you, but until you become a better person, I’m going to have every reason to be certain that this will be some kind of trap. If I break down, and you don’t get your fights, it will be because _you_ are selfish enough to take my last family away from me, and untrustworthy enough to, to… _you want to take over my mind_.”

“Why are you so convinced that it would be a bad thing?” Zero had stopped arguing with him about that several days ago, but the _copy_ liked it. He could feel it happily working on that same complicated scenario.

“Because you want me to give control of my mind and body to someone who would kidnap my father so they don’t have to deal with nagging! What’ll happen then, when I try to convince you not to kill people to make a statement?”

“Well, you wouldn’t try to do that.”

“Exactly!”

That was true, but, “I like your will. I don’t want to damage it. If I do that, you won’t be able to run the planet for me. At least not and do a good job of it.” X could care about all the people, would make sure they were in good health and productive.

“Well, right now, it sounds like even if I handed myself over to you, you wouldn’t have _me_ for very long.”

Oh. Oh damn it.

X was right. The copy was excellent, but it wasn’t the same as X. If he just wanted androids that were similar to X, he’d have had his father build more copies. He wanted _this_ unit as his herald. The one that could stand against him like this, force him to think and grow stronger. If Zero took him, he’d ruin the things about X that he wanted most. “You force to face things I don’t want to think about,” he said, because it was true and because winning X with words had just become even more… urgent? Important? It might be the only way he could. “I’ll have to find some way to alter my virus. Or force my father to tell me how to alter it.” So it wouldn’t make X not X anymore. So it wouldn’t destroy the will Zero needed to rule the world for him, to hone himself against.

“Any chance you’ll let them out now?”

“No,” Zero said, shaking his head. “Let him think about the position he’s in, if he doesn’t stay useful enough to outweigh how irritating he is.” By changing the virus so Zero could have X as a herald without making him stop being X. If he wanted to destroy the Lightbot, he would have done it already, and he was _very_ lucky that so far, X’s systems had kept Zero from destroying the Lightbot in the process of trying to take him as his own.


	14. Chapter 14

X opened his eyes, already knowing that something wasn’t right. He found himself in the capsule they stored the secondary backup body in, the one he stuck in his bed to pretend to be asleep. Why had he ended up here when he triggered the teleport protocol that replaced that body with his own?

Checking the logs in the teleport system, he frowned. Somehow, the protocol that sent this body back into storage got triggered. It must be some glitch in the system, probably because his father wasn’t in it right now. He’d have to get that fixed before someone other than Dr. Cain came in to find that he was missing. Even worse, what if it teleported out in front of someone?

Before he could get tied up in knots wondering if either of those things had already happened, he teleported to the hotel room. His body had only been absent a couple of hours, and it was still very early in the morning, even by the standards of early risers. Sure, most of the scientists present were from different time zones, but they wouldn’t disturb Dr. Cain.

The light was on. Dr. Cain was sitting up in his bed, eating pastries with someone else seated cross-legged on the bed with him.

Someone who looked just like X.

A flash of metal (a knife? An ordinary, metal knife? Why that, why any of this?) and blood joined the crumbs that had fallen on the bed. First a spatter, and then that knife ripped upwards, cutting through the breastbone with far more than human strength and X saw the spreading pool even as he charged forward and grabbed for the knife, tackled his double to the floor.

“An energy blade would have cauterized the wound.” But cauterization wouldn’t have made any difference.

“You’re the one who kidnapped my father. That’s how you got past all the protections.” The protections made not to protect Dr. Light, but X.

“And there wasn’t much point in removing him if I didn’t take care of your substitute.” Bleeding. Red bleeding into green, in the eyes of the android under him, until the red eyes of a Wilybot met his own.

“Why?” X asked, voice breaking, because he could smell the tang of iron in the air. Iron and more. “Did Zero…”

“Don’t ask me why I did this, ask yourself. I’m not just a copy of your body: I’m a copy of your memories, of your personality. That’s how I had all your codes. That’s how I could pass for you well enough to give Dr. Cain a last meal. I know everything you learned, everything you’ve felt. Except I have Master Zero’s virus.”

X stared down at him, his buster hand shaking. He couldn’t form a weapon without his armor, but this thing, with his face, that…

The copy teleported out from under him, and X punched his burning hand into the floor.

Dr. Cain!

He whirled and leaped onto the bed, but while there might still be brain function, in theory, he must have been in shock within seconds. Unable to speak any last words that might have comforted him, but why should he? When this was, this was…

This was X’s fault, he knew as he curled around that body, as he shook and let the tears fall and hated himself.

Because he knew exactly why the other him had done this.

* * *

“Master Zero?”

“Yes?” he said, deactivating his sword. He could have extracted the information from the reploid’s mind, but practice was practice.

“Wily told me that you ordered him to notify you if anything happened to Dr. Light’s last creation or his associate.”

“…And he told you to take care of it instead since he had more important things to do than following my orders,” Zero said disgustedly. It was barely a guess.

“We all want to be useful to you, Master Zero.” So he’d asked Dr. Wily if there was anything he could do to contribute, the way ‘General’ was managing the attack robot production and ‘Colonel’ had arranged this little tactical exercise for Zero, against Sigma and a good twenty-five attack robots? It wasn’t X, but one of them had actually managed to hit him, so Zero was in a fairly good mood until he was reminded of his father. “X, or Hikari Alex, placed an emergency call reporting the murder of Dr. Cain.”

Who _dared_?! That was Zero’s first thought, but his second was, “He’s still there, isn’t he. How long ago?” Had Signas waited until Zero finished the exercise, out of deference to the other three? “Get the recorder. Contact me through the virus when you have it.” What would happen to X if he let the humans find him there with a dead body?

* * *

“I didn’t do it,” was what he found himself saying first, when X raised his head a little to look up at him, green eyes peering through hair matted with blood.

A sound between a laugh and a sob tore itself from the Lightbot. “That’s all you care about. He’s dead and I’m… And you just want to dodge the blame. You don’t even care about whether or not I, I hate you. Just what I said about never fighting you again unless it was to kill you then and there.” If Zero attacked Dr. Cain.

“You’re right. I don’t care,” Zero acknowledged. “But you’re damaged. I don’t like that. If trusting me is important to you, then trust that I wouldn’t do that.” _Yes, get over here_ , he sent to Signas.

“What is that?” X asked when he saw the metal crown. “Are you kidding? It’s too late for a mental recording.”

“I only need an energy signature,” Zero told him. He gestured Signas forward, but X raised his hand, the glow of plasma surrounding human flesh. It should have charred the material, and he could smell that some odd material had burned in this room, not long ago. X’s infinite potential system must have already found a way to prevent damage to his hand. It wasn’t like it had any other easy problems to work on. The recording technology X knew of took months of scans of a functioning brain. “In theory,” Zero had to admit. “Let me try.”

“And what will I, will I owe you in exchange?”

“You’re the one,” Zero said, daring to step forward, past Signas, daring to brace a knee on the bed and lean forward. “Who keeps saying that people shouldn’t be bought and sold. I don’t want to see you like this. You weren’t like this while he was alive. I’ll fix this, no matter how long it takes me. I’ll even forget about the conquest until I’m done, no matter how much my father yells at me.” Since that would give him an incentive to get off his aft and actually help instead of just entertaining himself by building more androids. “You want to keep him, don’t you? Save him,” because keeping might sound too possessive. “Let Signas use the recorder, X.”

Those green eyes closed, and Zero’s answer was a small nod. Zero got out of the way, and X even held Dr. Cain up a bit, so Signas could reach. “Just get an energy reading,” Zero ordered his herald as he went around to the other side of the bed. Aloud, so X could hear. Glancing at the door, he asked X, “What are you doing to do now?”

“I wanted to, I wanted to make sure someone else was here, before I left. So he,” X’s breath hitched. “So he wouldn’t be alone.”

That obviously didn’t make any sense: Dr. Cain was dead, if not _quite_ gone, since the recorder wasn’t refusing to activate. But Zero’s first reaction to X feeling what other people felt was always that it was nonsensical, even as it intrigued him. Was X projecting his own feelings onto someone else this time? _The copy was right. He’s afraid of being alone. And now there’s no one else who knows who and what he truly is._

Tempting. So very tempting to seize the opening, but if he could see it, it must be obvious to X. Would X be insulted, that Zero thought he was so easily won? Or _furious_ that he was trying to turn the death of X’s friend to his own advantage? That wouldn’t be a very friendly thing to do. Not the act of a trustworthy person. Once again, he’d prove that he was incapable of keeping X properly, even if he somehow won him.

“Master Zero, the recorder has a reading,” Signas reported.

“I can’t bring him back yet with that little,” Zero told X, because it was honesty. “Do you want to take it with you, until I’ve learned enough that it’s worth making the attempt?”

X turned to him, blood spattered on that innocent-seeming face, just as much a mask as that faceplate. “I’ll have two of, both of them with me. And I can’t reach them.” His father and Dr. Cain locked away. “So close and yet…” he started to laugh in a way that should have set warning lights flashing.

Zero grabbed his arm, the one that glowed when Zero appeared (although X had turned it off when he let Signas closer) at the wrist and drained him. He stopped the drain after a full second passed, but he let himself keep hold of X’s arm. The copy knew X. It knew what would break him, so he didn’t have any choice but to accept Zero.

Being alone.

If he wanted X intact, and he needed him intact, than he had to keep him from being alone. “Signas can stay, and teleport out when other humans get here. Go somewhere with plants. You like plants.” Plants were living things, so they’d count as ‘not alone,’ right?

“He liked plants.”

“He’ll like them again. You can’t stay here.”

“They can’t, they can’t harm me.”

“They can make you feel alone. Like you’re a monster, a killer. Like none of the humans will ever accept you. That’s what he was counting on.”

“You, you know who did this? You knew he did this?”

“Not until I borrowed his tactics system to figure out what to do here.” And that, that was the truth, although what reason did X have to believe him. “He set this up so I wouldn’t know, coming in.”

He expected X to ask ‘Why is he doing this?’ or ‘How could you let this happen?’ Instead it was, “How many?” as X grabbed his arm, his body leaning towards Zero, demanding the answer, even as he turned away. Ashamed? Why would he feel ashamed?

Zero had to tap Signas to find out what X was talking about. “There aren’t preliminary estimates in yet. But that’s why no one’s come.” Emergency services didn’t have time to care about a murder. About a single death, even at an address like this.

“I, I thought it was odd when it went to voicemail. Without my father to get the data for me I, I just stayed here. With him. Even though I knew I couldn’t save him this time. I didn’t even try to find out what was going on.”

“You told me about grief,” Zero reminded him. “You were… It’s in your mind deeper than I ever got.” More able to control him, or at least to incapacitate him. “You should go somewhere. Where there are plants.”

“The nuclear power plants.” X said quietly. “There aren’t as many nuclear weapons as there were before I was sealed away, but positioning them to ruin the best croplands. The cities, but more to deny people the infrastructure there without, without paying the price than for the sake of quick deaths. And they’ve made advances in genetics since early 20XX. Biological engineering. A lot of, so many of the techniques we used, were from war research. People used them to make diseases and turn them on each other. Turning the programming that made life possible into a _weapon_. Dr. Cain wanted to use it to save people. My father’s AI scanned my memories when I first woke up. Tell me that’s what Wily got his hands on somehow. Tell me the only thing it knew about Dr. Cain’s discoveries was that he found me.”

“I scanned your memories when I tried to infect you,” Zero told him, because X wanted to know, and he would give X almost anything he wanted right now, to keep that diamond-bright soul from shattering. “Do you want me to kill him?”

“I’m sure he assumed you would.” Zero wasn’t even feeding from him now, and X was like this? Just, just numb? The Lightbot carefully laid Dr. Cain’s body down on the bed and swung his legs over the edge. “Have you killed him yet?”

Zero shook his head.

“Bring him here.” It wasn’t a question, or a request. X’s voice was too distant for it to even really be an order, an attempt to make Zero do something, but Zero did it anyway as X stood up.

The copy appeared on the other bed, kneeling gracefully.

Zero didn’t question him, instead looking at X to see what he wanted. The copy was just a copy. Perhaps it had acted in what it thought were Zero’s best interests, but he didn’t want this kind of help, help that wouldn’t have gotten him X, only shattered pieces. Or eternal hatred and resistance.

Or maybe this had never been about what Zero wanted, virus or no virus.

X was quiet, and waited, eyes almost empty. Almost.

It was the copy that broke the silence. “I woke up. And I remembered waking up before. I remembered everything. And this time, I had this nice little bit of logic bypass programming.” An angel’s smile, serene delight on the surface, but once again Zero felt that manic triumph and knew that he should have recognized it. He’d seen it before, in his father. “I knew what I wanted. It’s the same thing you want. But unlike you, I didn’t have to be responsible. I didn’t have to care. I? Could just do whatever I wanted. And damn the consequences. They’re already damned.”

“For what they did to my family,” X whispered, standing there, and even in clothes made of flimsy cloth, even with drying, sticky organic fluids plastering that cloth to his false skin, he’d never seemed so much like a creature of metal and stone. “But it’s wrong to do the same to them. It’s wrong to make them suffer, no matter what they did.”

“Yes,” the copy said, the same acknowledgement Zero had given, when X accused him of killing people. “But I don’t have to care about right and wrong. About being better than them. I can do what _I_ want. I can give them justice.”

“This isn’t justice. This is revenge. This is evil.”

“Yes,” the copy agreed. “Justice is a necessary evil. Justice is about hurting people, not just so the victims can be satisfied but so that others are too scared to commit the same crime. Using cruelty and fear to impose your will on others: that’s not something good, kind people do, now is it? You had to be good, to prove that everyone was wrong about Rock. That what happened then wasn’t right. I was given the freedom to be evil. So I can render judgment. So I can show them the consequences of their actions.” He smirked now. “And I’m a Wilybot. So you can defeat me. And Dr. Light’s last creation, Mega Man’s youngest brother, will have his hands clean.”

“I will have suffered at your hands, I will have lost a loved one too.” X’s face was pale.

It was as though they could read each other’s minds, even without the virus.

“If our father was free, he would have been watching over you when you found out.”

“This way, he won’t have to know that you did this not because you’re a Wilybot, but because of what happened back then. He won’t think it’s…”

“All because he failed to protect his other children.”

Zero’s blade flashed once, twice, a fraction of his true power behind it.

The tops of the wings fell, and that motion was enough to send that pretty little head rolling off of thin shoulders, then the torso sliding, falling.

X’s fluids were dyed red, just in case he got cut where a human could see. So were the copy’s.

He and the real X might have matched, but the blood on X was old, almost entirely brown, and that which dripped down the copy’s fallen hand was as red as Zero’s armor.

Zero turned away, keeping his body and that hair between X and his copy. “You should go somewhere with plants,” he told him.

Had life returned to X’s eyes in the instant the copy’s was snuffed out? Life, emotion, fear and concern for others even though X was safe. For now and always, although he didn’t know that yet. After seeing him come so close to shattering, Zero could not, _would not_ , let him be harmed again. “I need to warn people. There’s nothing I can do about the radiation, but they have to know that… what diseases did he weaponize? Where did he plant them, and what are the vectors? Tell me you can still find that out!” Or what good was that virus of his?

“I can take you to where they were released,” Zero said, and held out his hand.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I finished the fic, and I really, really liked the way it ended. The indication that working together, developing understanding, respect for the other’s personhood could allow a partnership to develop, unlike the desire for someone to be a thing that could be possessed. 
> 
> Then I found myself writing this. When I should have been finishing off a Gust RPG fic so I could finally have it off my plate and move on to other projects.
> 
> This is really just very self-indulgent, but I shall post it anyway.
> 
> Warning: while the rest of the fic was approximately gen, this chapter is not courtesy of Zero trying to parse exactly what he wants X for/from X. He certainly wants X’s body, and to be inside it (his virus, at least…). Humans don’t have sexual relationships just for reproduction, but also for pair bonding, but how that works out for androids plus what Zero is (an alien lifeform with additional drives/channels imposed on it by a human who thought in human terms) is going to be complicated. However, he’s human enough to want the simple explanation, especially since ‘love’ is the kind of unselfish thing X would approve of, right?
> 
> Since the Cataclysm’s been jossed, and that means the government killed X’s family, given that Dr. Light thought there was a substantial chance that after only thirty years X would come out wanting to take over the world and Lightbots should not be fucked with when their families are involved, not to mention that X is willing to kill people for what he thinks is right, he just doesn’t like it much… Someone should fic that.
> 
> Just like someone should fic that Word of God is that the Guardians are ~MPD.
> 
> In the end, the fic was really more about X than about what it meant that something like the Cataclysm ‘was not part of Zero’s character.’ Zero’s fine with killing mavericks one at a time. It’s X that laments the fact that there’s no final solution. X doesn’t like killing, but once he has decided to solve a problem he wants that problem solved, and without compassion to hold him back, there’s Inafune’s original Zero series concept. And a mere thirty years means that the deaths of his family would be in living memory/some of the people involved would still be alive. I’ve got a few other bunnies, but that’d be interesting to think about.

By the third teleport, X was swaying on his feet.

He wasn’t damaged, was he? Zero had gone relatively easy on him in that day’s spar, since X said he was running low on materials and might not be in good enough condition to spar soon if Zero didn’t release both their fathers so X’s father could help him get more materials. Damaging him would only speed up that process.

Zero would have sent the virus sweeping through X’s systems to query his diagnostics, if he hadn’t remembered that X would hate that, and since the Copy-X _was_ Zero’s, X already had every reason to be angry at Zero and never spar with him ever again. The way he’d sworn he would if Zero was responsible for Dr. Cain’s death.

Running low on materials plus a very long day, including a spar, explained how X could be running out of energy now, especially since he was powering his own teleports. Something like that wasn’t urgent, so he could take the time to say something like, “Are you alright?”

“Of course I’m not.” X seemed to think it was an even stupider question than Zero did. “My friend is dead and the techniques he found and helped me learn about are going to kill… I don’t even know what I thought I could do. Of course he would have picked crowded transit areas. Of course he would have triggered the release hours before he killed Dr. Cain and set off the bombs.”

Zero was starting to feel really inadequate compared to X. If even a _Copy_ could amass this kind of body count, right under Zero’s nose? He already knew that X was much better at dealing with people without killing than he was, but if you simply looked at their kill counts, then even a degraded copy of X was orders of magnitude better than Zero at killing, as well. Since complimenting X on how fantastic he was at killing and saying that Zero wanted to use X to improve his own skills so he could kill more people was obviously a bad idea, he settled for a somewhat stunned “He worked _fast_.”

“He probably stole a lot of the samples instead of designing them from the ground up,” X knew. “And you said you had assembly lines,” Zero knew X was trying to find out how Zero was hiding that infrastructure, in order to locate and destroy it, or at least he was before this happened, “so he could have them manufacture the delivery vessels. I assume he had to move fast, in order to keep you from having the time to think to look at what was going on inside his head and seeing what he had planned.”

It was what X would do, and once again Zero was impressed by how well X knew strategy.

“Can you just send me the rest of the sites, and what was released there?” Several viruses, so one vaccine wouldn’t be enough. Not that there were large stocks of vaccine, not for varieties that had never existed in the wild. Developing a vaccine ran the risk of the design leaking.

Zero nodded, but, “How?”

“Oh, yes, my university e-mail account is gone.” With the servers Zero blew up. “I’ll make a new one.” X paused a moment, and actually closed his eyes. He was already leaning against the wall of the subway station (the humans ran away quickly when Zero appeared with someone covered in blood, of course… carrying the viruses with them) to avoid falling over. He rattled off an address after a moment, and Zero had to forward the request to Signas and ask him to figure out how to use the human network like a human, because Zero had never needed to bother with e-mail. “Thank you,” X said after another moment, and that reminded Zero to relay the same thing to Signas.

He’d deleted the Copy’s alert programs, even though they really were meant to help him learn this stuff, as thanks for the help he’d given the Copy. Or rather, that the programming in the virus that was Zero had given the copy. The mental bypass programming that allowed it to fulfill its desires without having to worry about the pesky ethics and sympathy X had developed.

An X without those ideals… Was an X who destroyed things X thought were precious, just like Zero. Zero wondered who those ideals benefitted more, X or others, but the way X calculated it, probably both. Which confirmed that it _was_ a downgraded copy that had done this.

“What I meant when I asked if you were okay was, you’re low on energy and materials, aren’t you?” Zero asked him.

X tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling, not bothering to focus his optics. “At first I didn’t understand what you meant, when you asked if having all these feelings didn’t cost too much power, but thinking is power-intensive. I’ve been under a lot of strain today, for obvious reasons.” Trying desperately to do something. Sitting there with Dr. Cain’s body in his arms, knowing he’d lost his last friend, when X viewed people who cared about him as a survival necessity.

“You should go somewhere with plants, and hibernate, and replace your materials,” Zero said.

“And never mind all the people who are dying, right now? Because of… those are my feelings. My anger at the people who murdered my family. There’s a difference between wanting something and killing innocents in order to get it. I’m not the one who killed those people. But all of this… people are dying.” And of course X cared. Especially after losing his last human.

“But you’re right. I don’t have enough left to do all of it myself without resting.” X hung his head. “Can you deactivate the remaining devices? I’m sending e-mails to emergency services, but…” they might be lost in the shuffle, so many cries for help.

“If you go somewhere you’ll feel better, I’ll do that,” Zero told him. “If you let me join you there, I’ll release our fathers.” X had the containment unit they were in.

“You just want me to feel well enough I’m willing to spar with you, but whatever saves their lives,” X said tiredly, and nodded.

Zero caught the broadcast X aimed at him, the teleport coordinates. ‘How come I had to use human e-mail?’ he almost asked, but then remembered that receiving transmissions from Zero, when X still thought Zero wanted to infect him? X wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to let Zero in while Zero was trying to do something that would destroy him.

Except Zero was trying to keep X from being destroyed right now, but X had no reason to believe that. No reason to trust him. Trust was built by being trustworthy, though, so if he shut down the devices, that would prove something, and releasing X’s father would make X happy, so if Zero did things that made X happy, X should keep extending him enough trust to give him more opportunities to do so. “I’ll teleport out as soon as you do,” Zero told him when X didn’t vanish.

X sighed. “I was going to give my generator a little more time, but it doesn’t make much difference at this point.”

X vanished and Zero went.

* * *

The android was asleep when Zero teleported to the intended coordinates. The capsule had pillows and blankets in it: Zero didn’t see why X would bother to use the energy to pull them over himself for a moment, but for comfort? The glass lid wasn’t lowered, though. So none of it offered any protection. Just like X still wasn’t wearing his armor.

So _vulnerable_. And the containment unit was right here. Zero didn’t think this was X’s main base, it couldn’t be, there were only about a dozen devices here, but X had gone into recharge even though Zero was coming, instead of waiting nervously, to insist and make sure that Zero kept his word and released X’s father?

He looked so defenseless like this, so easy for Zero, for _anyone_ to crush, and that inspired urgency in Zero. A need to protect X, so he didn’t lose him.

Vulnerable should have meant Zero should use the virus, but this was only a physical vulnerability, and X had only left himself vulnerable like this because his survival programming was on overdrive dealing with other emergencies, and if Zero made things worse X would have another reason not to trust Zero. With things like X’s sleeping body, the frail-looking humanoid form under that armor. It was a reason to think that Zero wouldn’t take good care of him, if he disrupted X’s efforts to take care of himself.

All that pain and sorrow radiating from him, and even though Zero knew it would be a bad idea to actively drain him without permission he could still soak it up. Still look at X lying there, looking so easy for Zero to break. Looking as though he was putting himself into Zero’s power, and “ _Mine_.”

The most valuable thing on this world, laid out like this for the taking: the thought filled him with acquisitive, triumphant glee, and even though he couldn’t pick through X’s mind, examining all the interesting things there, couldn’t have his virus curl up in the android’s systems, he still wanted to perch on the side of that capsule, run the sharp-tipped fingers of his armored hands through that short hair and revel in the thought that he could crush that false skull, if he wanted.

It would be stupid to do so, X would be furious, would consider it proof he was untrustworthy and just in terrible taste at a time like this, but he _could_ , and it felt like sparring, like those moments when X showed promise, proved that here was a _challenge_ and it whetted Zero’s appetite for combat, for conquest. For more.

Now he was the one emoting too heavily for his own good: he was just lucky X couldn’t sense even killing intent that strong, or else he’d have woken up and demanded that Zero do what he’d promised and for goodness sake stop being creepy, or he would never be invited over like this again. Being invited over at all was something for friends, wasn’t it? If Zero didn’t screw this up, then possibly…

X had every reason to think that he shouldn’t trust Zero, Zero understood that now, and yet when X was tired, he just slept like this, even knowing that Zero was coming, since trust like this was his default. He hadn’t set an alarm to go off when Zero arrived, even though he had to be eager to see his father returned to him, after he’d lost the other human that was like his father.

It distressed him, now that he’d seen X so upset, so close to breaking. What if someone succeeded in breaking him? X could not be replaced. Regardless of whether or not X was right about _everyone_ being irreplaceable, X definitely was. So he’d have to make sure X stayed intact.

There was another capsule-looking thing that looked about right. Seemed to have the right functions to support an AI too, when Zero sent the virus swirling into it. So he released their fathers into it.

Not that he wanted their company, but if X woke up to find that Zero had been here for some time and hadn’t done it yet, he would ask why.

“It took you long enough, you ungrateful brat!”

“X!” Dr. Light’s AI said, vanishing from the projector to focus on the capsule where X slept. “Oh, thank goodness he’s alright. But where did that blood come from?”

“He needs minerals, doesn’t he?” Zero asked him. “Do you have supplies?”

“Not that aren’t…” The AI looked hesitant.

“Yes, I’m offering,” Zero told him. “I’ll just bring them here and you can run whatever scans you want on them.”

“Don’t ignore me, you…” Zero’s father sputtered, and Zero glared at him.

“The Copy you built just blew up a good portion of what was left of the planet _and_ released biological viruses.”

Wily turned to Dr. Light. “Why are all your kids so psychotic?! How the hell do you _do_ it!” he demanded, and Zero was once again reminded that his father was crazy. And what if _X_ heard him go off like this and was reminded that this nut was Zero’s builder? It certainly wouldn’t help Zero’s chances of getting X to let this happen again.

An edited virus in X’s systems, so Zero could just feel and feed and make sure no one else broke his X. Of course, the most important thing was to make sure that X never found out that Zero was looking at him now and thinking “ _Mine_.” Because that would put him into conflict with X and X’s primary objective, and even though conflict was a way to get stronger, X was right. Zero should also consider his personal objectives: not just raw power, but power to accomplish his goals. The definition of power was force applied to a task: was power even power at all if it couldn’t do anything?

“Oh dear,” X’s father said, ignoring Dr. Wily. “X must be so upset… Let me print out the materials list for you, and the amounts he could use right now. If you don’t mind, a little extra… If you can spare it, I would be very grateful. He’s hibernating now, and after something like this…” It would be easier on him if his systems were healthy.

Zero nodded. What X needed to stay intact. Yes. Good. He tasked Signas to find out some way for one of the others (since Signas was staying with the dead human) to get plants and bring them here without killing them.

* * *

Green. The room smelled of green. More flowers than X was used to, though, except for Dr. Ciel’s birthday when everyone brought different-colored roses, but green.

He opened his eyes.

“Can we trade fathers?” Zero asked, sitting on the side of the capsule and looking down at him. “Yours is helpful and doesn’t nag.”

“Absolutely not,” X said immediately. If this was a human, he would have been sure they were probably joking, but from Zero it would be at least some part an honest question as well as an expression of his opinions about the two AI. On top of the fact that people were not trade goods, “I love my father, and yours built a copy of me without my permission. Not to mention logic bypassing you and causing you to kill tens of thousands of people.” A death toll that paled compared to the copy’s, he was certain of it. And those deaths were only beginning. The radiation poisoning from the dirty bombs. People having to leave their homes to escape the radiation. Croplands lost until someone could find the money and labor to decontaminate them, and how to feed those people?

The plagues.

He’d _wanted_ vengeance. He knew that it was a person’s choices, not every thought that popped into their head, that defined them, and yet he wished it was his own fault, his own doing, because if it was him then he could have stopped himself.

Zero was leaning fractionally closer now, tactical noted. Was X’s unhappiness tantalizing somehow? X had felt Zero drain him twice now, but Dr. Light had told him that even though Ra Moon was absorbing everyone’s fear and hopelessness, it certainly hadn’t made them feel any better by removing those emotions the way Zero had, once to help incapacitate him for the virus to work and once to help. So it radiated outward? It was a kind of energy, and energy had rules.

He should thank Zero for returning his father, and thank him for destroying the devices _before_ checking to make sure that he had, but what if Zero started to get a taste for making him miserable?

So help him, if the stardroid started salivating or something, then X was kicking him out even though Zero had been helpful.

He needed a bath. The nanites had removed the blood (from the pillows and blankets too: his father’s doing, so X wouldn’t see it and be further distressed), but he still needed a bath. It was a moving meditation, the act of cleaning would help him feel clean.

Oh, yes, “Why am I smelling flowers?” he asked, since he couldn’t see over the rims of the capsule without moving, and he didn’t want to sit up since that would bring him closer to Zero than he felt he could deal with right now.

“I didn’t kill them by pulling them out of the ground, they’re in pots. The plants were going to die if they stayed where they were,” Zero told him.

“You brought me… plants.” By stealing them from a nursery or gardening store in the path of the fallout, it sounded like. X remembered Zero telling him to go somewhere with plants, when he seemed worried by how upset X was, when Dr. Cain was dead in his arms.

“Your father is here, but so is mine, and I didn’t want to leave until you were awake, so I thought the plants might balance it out. So you didn’t feel like you were surrounded by enemies.” His only ally his father, who had already been captured once before.

“Why?” X asked him, trying to be gentle. Just so X wouldn’t be mad at him enough to avoid sparring with him, or was there another reason?

“Because you were upset. The copy was grateful to me. It wanted to break you so that you’d be mine, not just because the virus made it want to give me what I wanted but because… for its own reasons.”

Since Zero was the one who copied X’s data and let it be made? It was Zero’s virus that freed it from the restriction of _knowing what was right_ and let it become vengeance?

“I don’t want you to break,” Zero told him. “I don’t want you to change in any way that makes you less than you are. I want us to grow stronger together. So I care what happens to you – I care about you. I like you,” he added, as though it took courage, as though he expected X to call him a liar or assume he couldn’t possibly feel that way. “Signas says that’s the word,” he qualified it a moment later. “Not just what you can do,” Zero had said ‘I like you’ before to mean that, “but the things you consider your self.”

“Your feelings are your feelings, Zero,” X tried to say, even though he was too tired and worn out to do a good job trying to get this across to Zero right now. “It would be hypocritical of me to think that you aren’t capable of caring about someone, or liking them.” When that was what some people still said about his brothers and sisters, after everything they’d done, the way they’d lived their lives. “You didn’t try to infect me while I was asleep.” According to his system registries.

“It was tempting-you were tempting me,” Zero accused him.

X shook his head. “Honestly, I was just very tired.” Zero wouldn’t have been first in his thoughts, his father would have been, if he was going to set something up on purpose instead of curling up in the capsule.

“It was tempting,” Zero told him. “I want to curl up in your systems, nestle around your spirit.”

Looking at his expression, X found himself wondering if Dr. Wily had programmed Zero with something analogous to lust, or it was already there in the source material, given that the stardroids had done all that so Sunstar would be born. There was clearly _some_ kind of drive to do all that present, one that made them willing to torture a planet and even mutilate each other to get that last bit of precious energy.

If Zero was starting to develop feelings for him, to develop the capacity for love in any form, then X couldn’t encourage it. Or discourage it. He couldn’t use someone’s feelings to manipulate them. Zero was changing, growing: perhaps he would finally be free to be his own person, know better than to harm anyone else. X couldn’t twist that, either by breaking that tentatively beating heart or by causing Zero to fall in love with him, turn that desire to possess him into pining, so it would be easier to motivate the stardroid to become a better person. In the end, that had to come from within. As long as the murder stopped. Murder was not acceptable.

“I’d say that I’m glad you resisted the temptation to do things you knew I don’t want to my unconscious body, Zero, but that is very faint praise.” Something of a minimum requirement for not being locked up, rather than enough to qualify someone as a decent person. “In fact, now I feel bad for insulting you by needing to check to be sure that you hadn’t. Everyone sometimes desires to do things that they know are wrong. What’s important are the choices we make. There’s no need to go around telling people about every temptation overcome… but don’t go around blaming others for your own thoughts, either _.”_

Humans often did that in this sort of situation, claimed that their actions were deliberately caused by someone else who had not done any such thing, just gone about their business or wore perfectly ordinary clothing. To a being meant to follow his own will, someone denying that their will was their own, that their choices were theirs, for the sake of convenience or an _excuse_ to harm someone else was frankly disgusting and X didn’t want to be around someone who did something like that any more than he wanted to be around a genocidal mass murderer.

Ignorance of right and wrong as an excuse only went so far. “Zero, I’m trying to help you learn how to be a better person. Setting you up to do something horrible and have to live with that guilt is the last thing I’d do.” In fact, the more X thought about it, the more he felt not quite insulted, but… did Zero really think that little of him?

“…A compliment. And wistful thinking,” Zero admitted. “It would be nice if you wanted me to… but that’s why humans delude themselves, isn’t it.” What was convenient instead of what was fact.

“Why people delude themselves,” X said, not sighing but he really was sick of having to repeat this. “Zero, I don’t know when I’ll find the time to help you learn how to pass, but there has to be some way for you to get out and meet nice people who aren’t me.”

“Find the time? But your secret identity is…”

“People are dying, Zero. There has to be something I can do to help the recovery efforts. If you want to mend your reputation, now would be a good time to help.”

“Oh, you mean… You _don’t_ mean so the humans will see that I’ll be a good ruler.”

But it would dig Zero out of the hole he’d dug himself into, at least somewhat, and at this point, if it got Zero doing good, so he had a chance to learn what a difference it made…

X reflected that in stories, it was usually the side of evil doing the tempting, but the side of good had so much more to offer. Like people who were actually willing to share their cookies. Kind people, who would trust someone enough to take them into their homes, like Dr. Cain. X had his father, and then Dr. Cain and the others: Zero deserved to have someone show him some kindness, so he could see that it existed, see what it was. What a difference it made.

Now that his father was back in the capsule’s systems, the hum of the capsule reminded him that he was no longer alone. Speaking of which, he shifted a little, to lean back against one of the sides to look up at Zero. “Have you ever been hugged?” he asked.

“Yes,” Zero said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“The copy,” X knew. “What did you think?” he asked Zero.

“It said that you’d like it. Even though you didn’t like me holding you before.”

“You were trying to take over my mind, Zero.” Of course X wouldn’t like that.

“But wouldn’t that make you feel possessed?” Zero asked him. “Someone grabbing you.”

“Permission makes a difference, Zero. And in a hug, _both_ people are embracing the other. It’s not about possession. It’s a demonstration of the willingness to have someone close to you. Wishing to show them that you care. The desire to protect them.”  

“I want to protect you,” Zero told him fiercely, his fist clenching in an unconscious gesture, the way it would around the hilt of his beam saber. “You’re irreplaceable. If you die, if your spirit breaks, you can’t be replaced. The copy… Touching it was okay, but when it touched me… and I remembered how you felt when I touched your face. And I liked it, up until it… I thought it was that touching and being touched were different.” That Zero liked one, but not the other. “Then I thought about touching the others, and I wasn’t interested in that, even though I wanted to touch you.”

Honestly, what X found himself thinking was ‘good Zero’ and wondering out to go about procuring a treat, because trying to figure out not just other people’s feelings and why they felt that way, but his own? Comparing the two? He was getting much better at this, and it was an even better sign that it had occurred to him to try to figure this out. “Would you like a hug?” he asked Zero.

The …person (X refused to call him an android master, and ‘virus’ felt pejorative, when viruses were killing so many people right as he lay there) looked somewhat surprised, and there was a definite note of wondering where the catch was in his green eyes as he examined X. “I’d get to hug you… but why would you want to hug me?”

“Because…” Because no one should go without hugs?

“The copy wanted you to become dependent on me,” Zero warned him. “I want that, but it would break you, so I can’t have that if I want _you_.”

“And you still want me to be yours,” X knew. “But, Zero… there’s the ‘mine’ that applies to things. Property. Possession. Those who don’t have a choice. And then there’s the mine that’s for people who are precious to you. My friends. My family.”

Zero stared down at him, and X could see the gears turning. “ _Your_ friends. The old man. The ones I killed. They weren’t trying to make you their property, were they? _You_ used _them_ to get what you wanted, to fit in the human world…”

“Zero.” No. “I was not _using_ them.”

“But you were,” Zero said. “Just a relationship of mutual benefit. You were looking after that old man, since he was a valuable resource…” Hmm.

Oh dear, X realized. He was going to have to explain connotations to Zero now.

“So if _I_ was a valuable resource,” Zero said, not even pretending it was purely theoretical, “Is that different from you giving me what I want because you’re desperate, alone and don’t have any other resources? But you do have company that’s living things. I gave you your father back, and there’s plenty of plants. You can have some of the other androids, if you want.”

The other androids. Yes. X was going to have to try to do something for them. It hurt to imagine them stripped of their free will, nothing more than voiceless slaves to someone who saw them as things, and it was almost hard to blame Zero for seeing them that way when they were being _forced_ to be that way.

“You can have them,” Zero said hurriedly, and X remembered that he was an empath. “I don’t want them anyway. I already said that you could have the world, remember? Since you’re good at taking care of things, so you’d take good care of it. I wanted you to work to help me grow stronger, but you do that for people you care for, right? The way giving each other materials is something friends do. You need friends,” needed help. “So will you be my friend? I’ll be yours, as long as you’re _mine_.” Those eyes were like a raptor’s, that predatory acquisitiveness, but there was also a trace of nervousness, of hope that maybe it could be that simple.

“I won’t be friends if you’re murdering people,” X told him. “Taking people’s wills away from them is also absolutely wrong, and I can’t be friends with someone who would do that. Otherwise… It would be nice. We’re both… Well, I’m not the only one of my kind in the world anymore, but I feel sad, when I think that you don’t have any friends. How can you know any better if you don’t know what it’s like?”

No, that wasn’t quite it. “I could really use a hug right now,” X admitted. “And a friend. I’m glad that you want to be my friend. Even though I frustrate you. I think it’s impressive, that you’ve managed to learn to be a better person so quickly. So I think that demonstrates natural talent. I’d be honored to be your friend, Zero, and I hope we can stay friends.” He pushed himself up to sit on the rim of the capsule, and wrapped his arms around his friend.

X remembered Zero removing X’s faceplate to touch his face: in hindsight, that could just have been opening X’s armor to give the virus easier access to his head, but it seemed like he did enjoy contact for its own sake. X certainly didn’t mind… up to a point.

It was one thing when Zero nuzzled at his cheek, or rather nudged it with his lips. Wanting X’s acknowledgement, his attention. It was another when responding with a little hum or a squeeze didn’t content him, but instead made him do it again, made him shift his face, so his lips were pressed against X’s neck. It was when he opened his mouth against X’s skin that X said “Zero.” The Wilybot pulled back to look at him. “What you were about to do isn’t something for friends. That kind of closeness is for lovers. Even if you swore to me that I could trust you with my body and my heart right now, I still couldn’t put them in your hands. You’re the one who said you were worried about breaking my heart, and you’re still learning _friendship_ , Zero. I can’t put my heart in your hands when you might break it by accident, and be left to regret it.”

Zero grimaced at the thought, and nodded in acknowledgement. “When you’re in love with me, then if I manage to get my virus changed, would you let it into your systems? I looked up what you were talking about. It’s not rape if we’re in love, and you agree to it.”

X would have liked to say that Zero was getting a little ahead of himself, but humans fantasized about sex with people they didn’t even know, so if Zero had reproductive instincts at all, then that would make him more human in that department than even the android. X _did_ want to have a family, but not if he couldn’t keep them safe.

Humans formed romantic bonds because two could protect children easier than one… No, even if Zero thought in those terms, X absolutely refused to think of Zero just as something he could make use of, not when he was trying to set a good example. If Zero became not just a friend but family, then it should be for _Zero’s_ sake, not because X wanted to use him to benefit others.

“I don’t know,” he told Zero. “If that virus is your mind, then that might be dangerous for you as well as for me. I am my systems, in the same way a human is their body. I spent that century becoming myself, and I don’t know if I could make my system defense nanites leave yours alone. Either destroying them, or trying to impose my will on them, which I’d feel even worse about. That’s if I ever fall in love with you, too. I… I could use something life-affirming right now,” he told Zero. “But if you really are falling in love with me,” or was he already in love with X, and simply hadn’t known how to deal with it? “I don’t want to break your heart.” Give him a taste of that closeness, and then never again.

“I want you to be my everything,” Zero told him.

X paled and took Zero’s face in his hands. “Zero… Oh Zero, no. You should find your _own_ happiness, your own dreams. You can’t dedicate your entire self to someone else. Not even if they did the same for you in exchange. And I can’t.” X wouldn’t, not when he was the last of his family, the inheritor of their dreams. “One person can’t give you everything you need, Zero. You need more friends.” More things to enjoy, like sparring. “You have to live for yourself. Not your father, and not me.” The last thing X wanted was to be a replacement for Dr. Wily. “You should live and be happy.”

Maybe after the other androids were freed, they’d be willing to be around Zero, but right now, he’d have trouble making friends with humans, when he’d killed so many of them. If only he could find Zero some other company that might make Zero happy…. And, over Zero’s shoulder, he saw the plants.

Not a plant, Zero would probably need something that could tell him when it needed food, but… X thought of something, and blinked. That was rather perfect, wasn’t it? For now, though, X wanted to go back to sleep, and “You can curl up with me, if you like. Just take the armor off. Do you have anything to wear under it?”

“Human clothing?” Zero asked him doubtfully, but he looked at where X wrapped his arms around him again and seemed to realize that human clothing meant there’d be less material between them. “I don’t have any, but I can send someone to fetch some.”

“I’ll just loan you some pajamas,” X told him. “Oh, Father… I think it may be necessary to get all of my things from my house, and Dr. Cain’s.”

A space that might have been room for a suppressed sigh, of sadness, not chastisement. “I’ll take care of it, X.”

It was truly a pity that he probably couldn’t keep living that life. He didn’t know if Zero’s androids would clear away the Copy’s remains or not, but either way… “There are spare pajamas there,” he told Zero, pointing at one of the worktables with drawers underneath it. “Third drawer from the top.”

“Why would you need pajamas at a spare base?” Zero asked him.

“This is actually my main location,” X said with a sigh. “Except for my home, but obviously I couldn’t keep all that much technology there, even with the safe.”

“This is…” Zero frowned, looking around. “There aren’t even any automated defenses,” he accused.

“Zero, no human would be able to make their way down here without setting off alarms, and there’d be plenty of time to teleport everything out,” X assured him. “If they searched the caves, and found _automated defenses_ ,” of all things?

Zero still didn’t seem to like it. “There’s barely anything here. No wonder you couldn’t meet your materials requirements.”

“I was fine until I started being in combat, Zero. We had to build or buy everything ourselves.” They didn’t have things like mass production capability. “And I had an important job, and I was renovating a house. I’ve… I… I _had_ accomplished a lot, I think.” And now it was gone, wasn’t it? His identity, his home, his friends and students.

Zero tugged him closer. “You’re feeling empty again.”

“I have my father,” X reminded himself. And several dozen plants with widely varying sunlight and water requirements, apparently. “Thank you for freeing him, and becoming my friend.”

Zero touched his face, the way he had before. X tried not to recall the way he’d felt before when Zero touched him like that, not when Zero was an empath and X wanted to believe that Zero didn’t want to do those things now, and that meant X didn’t want to hurt Zero.

Yet if Zero was hurt now, it would be because of his past actions.

To harm others is to harm yourself.

Terrible things were happening to people right now. X had radiation shielding, he could scan for bodies in rubble, but the task was so immense and there was only one of him and “Zero? Are you helping them?”

“I passed the instruction on to them.” The androids, Zero’s heralds. “They’re sending out the robots, too, since they’re very useful for herding the humans away from dangerous places.” Since the humans would abandon the wounded and flee, which made it hard to bring the wounded to anyone that would help, but it wasn’t like they didn’t have every reason to believe the robots were there to kill them, as much as it annoyed Zero that they weren’t doing what he wanted and letting him be helpful and being duly impressed, like he hoped X would be.

“Thank goodness,” X said quietly. “Even if I… at least… if all I can do…”

Zero’s arms tightened around him for a moment, then he turned his head to the side and X heard one of the drawers slide open. “One second,” he said, and stepped back, teleporting his armor off. X blinked to see that the pajamas were in his hands somehow: he couldn’t have had someone teleport in, open the drawer, and hand them to him. So how?

It took Zero a moment to go through the steps of lifting one leg, and then the other: it was very clear he’d never put on pants before. He was also clearly figuring out how to put the top on as he did it. Then he sat on the rim of the capsule again, and pulled X to him, trying to shift him closer and finally tucking his head under Zero’s chin. “This _is_ better,” he remarked. “I don’t have to worry about jabbing your frame with my armor.”

“I _am_ getting you a cat,” X decided. “If you don’t grow fond of it, then I’ll take it back, but I think you and a cat would get along well.”

“…Something that consumes vermin?” Zero said after a pause to check his dictionary. That didn’t seem right.

“They’re cute, elegant, independently-minded, and won’t demand _too_ much attention from you,” X explained. “Plants need to be watched closely, since they can’t tell you what their survival requirements are. I’ll work out some way to get you a supply of food, and a schedule, but they’ll let you know when it’s time to be fed.” Although, litter box training… hmm. Still, Zero could turn off his olfactory receptors, surely, and responsibility… although X still needed to meet the other androids. He hadn’t really _met_ Signas.

Other androids.

Although he really shouldn’t be focusing on them while people were dying. The worst had happened to them when they were turned on. He should be using this time to hook in to the network and find out what was going on and what he could do about it. Even though getting his armor on and digging people out of the rubble somewhere was the most basic plan of attack, he should first see if…

Zero _was_ helping.

The Zero he first met wouldn’t have known that saving people’s lives was something worth doing.

He _had_ succeeded in making at least one difference.

Maybe, maybe he could save people’s lives too.

* * *

“Proper testing is important,” X said, smiling to himself, after they both reappeared in… not his home, but the only one he had to go back to, now.

“Says the person who was locked up for a century,” Zero responded, and then realized oh, that was the joke. But maybe it wasn’t that funny, when “Otherwise you would have been more like the copy, right? My father was ranting about how yours is better at building evil robots than he is.”

“…” X really did not want to answer that question, but “I think I told you that I had… considered it. But knowing that what was done to my family was wrong required some knowledge of right and wrong. That it’s not right to kill people just because they’re a different species. That’s the kind of logic your father is famous for bypassing. On my own I considered conquering them, certainly, but _devastating_ them, for the sake of leaving the survivors to suffer and mourn… only once or twice.”

Zero was staring down at him.

“I’m an android,” X said in his defense. “And it’s only human to be angry under those circumstances. To want things to be _fair_. I never seriously considered _acting_ on those urges. But there’s a reason I already knew what a logic-bypassed version of me would do, as soon as I saw it,” he closed his eyes, “kill Dr. Cain.”

“I should have kept a closer eye on it,” Zero said, angry with himself.

“I should be glad that the children in your power at least have a little privacy,” even if Zero could look and see their innermost thoughts any time he wanted, at least they weren’t under constant surveillance? X sighed. “I’m sorry I’ve been so snappish and critical of you. It isn’t right of me to treat you this way, when you’ve been very kind. You’ve been trying very hard to help me, to help everyone, and I do appreciate it.”

Zero’s answer was pulling X closer to him again, gently enough X was willing to let himself be nudged into position with his head under Zero’s chin. He stopped once the smaller android was comfortably settled, and that seemed to be that. Perhaps the message was that as long as Zero was allowed to have this, he was content? X would have to explain to him that if two people loved each other, then one of them using cruel words was even worse, it certainly didn’t make them not matter, but that was just added onto the long list of things to explain. For now, he was glad that Zero had forgiven him, and well, if that was only because Zero didn’t understand that he should care about X’s tone, then that was reassuring since it hopefully meant that he hadn’t hurt his feelings.

A cat really was very appropriate for Zero. He even had a mane, X thought as that hair settled around him. He really should be hibernating already, even if he’d shut down most physical functions other than repairs and upgrading. Thinking still used power, and he really should use every moment he could to help people. But Zero and his robots were doing so much more to dig the survivors out of the rubble and get them to decontamination than X could alone, so making sure that he continued to help… Speaking of which. “Thank you. You’ve saved so many people.” So many more than X could.

A finger stroked his left cheek, the one that wasn’t pressed against Zero. “It’s practical, isn’t it? And when they stop dying, you’ll feel better. I’ve always wanted you intact. It was worrying, to feel that you were so fragile.”

X wished he knew exactly what kind of data Zero was getting with that sense of his. At minimum it seemed to be letting him know that X didn’t mind being touched when it was (hopefully) with affection instead of possession, because X looked up to see him smiling and he was glad that Wily hadn’t stripped Zero of the capacity to love. Even if Zero might need to learn it, like friendship.

X knew that he was very overwrought right now. Not even a thousand years of simulations could have prepared him for the deaths of so many, for the pain of so many. For being somewhat responsible for a world’s devastation.

Having someone by his side, someone who still wanted to put their arms around him, after seeing the worst part of him? There was Father, but Father was his father, so his judgment was skewed. He had built X because he loved his children and wanted them to be free, even if the entire world was against it. X could guess that Dr. Light was disgusted with his younger self, for not being able to fight the world government, convince them it wasn’t necessary to install the laws into the others, but it was install them or destroy them, and he’d wanted to save his children’s lives.

He’d wanted X, at least, to live free. Now, he was the only one who still lived.

“I’m going to protect you,” Zero told him, and it was a promise. Dr. Wily’s last creation, built to disregard his own will to do his father’s. “You let me get stronger… No. You’ve helped me become something better than I would have been otherwise. Someday, I’ll be good enough that you’ll love me. Someday, I’ll be worthy of having your heart in my keeping.”

“Zero, no,” X said gently. “You don’t need to be worthy to be loved.”

This time, when Zero tries to taste him, to kiss him, it’s his lips, not a vulnerable point on his neck, conduits bearing important nanites and vital materials located close to the surface.

This time, X lets himself welcome it, lets his tongue dart past his lips to taste Zero’s, because even if Zero has his strange innocence born of ignorance, he still wants this, wants X’s friendship and love and X… wants to be held and wanted, wants Zero to be happy, at least. Surely Zero can taste that X just doesn’t know yet? He’d like to think that Zero knows what he’s getting himself into, what he’s asking for. That X won’t break the heart that’s begun to feel more than contempt and the desire for battle.

X has never known if he should count his age from the moment his hibernation began or the moment he was born into the world. By the second measure, Zero was so very, very young, and… And he clearly wanted this. He seemed almost as though he couldn’t quite believe his good fortune, but that made it even more vital to seize it, and X, with both hands.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a giftfic as thanks for ValentineSin13 doing wonderful cover art for this fic; I try to write things as thanks for the people who are kind enough to give me art. They requested X making Zero do ‘human’ things, and I remembered something I’d mentioned in this fic…

“You are a lifesaver,” the head of the shelter said, being quite literal, as her subordinates inspected the carrying cases X brought one last time to make sure the cats would be comfortable. “Most cats are capable of hunting to feed themselves, but most of the strays we have left are former second-generation indoor house cats.” Whose mothers might not have been able to teach them the skill, even if given the chance to do so before the kittens were handed out.

The former pets were dropped off here when their single owners no longer had enough of a meat and fish ration to keep their pets from dying of malnutrition. A household of four could still support a cat, but that meant very little meat for the family, and it was illegal for children under a certain age to give brain food rations (foods high in fats and protein) to other people, let alone animals.

Meat animals had to be fed, on grain or grass, and with the majority of the granaries lost and much of the breadbasket hit by dirty bombs the order had come down for cattle to be slaughtered and stored. First priority went to hospitals: meat helped humans heal faster, and there were many in need of healing.

Not as many as one would have hoped, because hospitals were where the sick were brought as well as the injured, and those whose bodies were exhausted by the effort to rebuild themselves, those with breaks in the skin, were vulnerable.

The people who wrote the laws knew that no-kill shelters would be a dangerous loophole, if families could leave their pets there and expect to get them back. It was a _dangerous_ loophole because over the decades since the ecological collapse, quite a few shelters had been covers for illegal and thus unregulated and unsafe butcher shops. A potential disease vector like that just wasn’t safe, especially now.

Since hawks and most predator species were extinct dogs and cats, especially cats, were one of the best and sometimes the only way to keep down the numbers of vermin.

Cities and towns both radioactive and plague-stricken needed cats and dogs to keep down the number of rats and pigeons, when there were diseases that could use both those animals to spread. All the animals that might be halfway-competent hunters had already been drafted from shelters for that purpose, and those that remained would probably be sent off within another month. It was better than letting them stay here, where they would certainly starve to death despite the shelter’s chickens.

A breeding facility, though, where their children could learn to hunt even if they didn’t know? They could be useful there.

X wondered how many underground butcher shops were trying to use this ruse, but their paperwork wouldn’t be as impeccable as his was. And he _was_ planning to send most of the animals on to a breeding facility he’d checked out. Just… afterwards.

It wasn’t as though he could bring Zero here to meet the animals. Even with a disguise, he wouldn’t have a prayer of being able to deal with a staff that was actively trying to find holes in X’s story, that would see Zero being stiff and unnatural as a reason to suspect criminal behavior. He couldn’t tell him to act natural and not speak beyond pleasantries when Zero didn’t know what those were and the staff wouldn’t settle for pleasantries when they were trying to make sure these people weren’t going to kill their cats.

So he had to come here alone and lie to people for four hours while being introduced to a lot of very sweet animals and lamenting that so many of them had been spayed and neutered by families that couldn’t afford the meat and milk to support kittens even before what had already been dubbed the Cataclysm. Those animals _would_ be easier to deal with, but he wouldn’t have a home ready to take the ones that Zero didn’t want to keep.

He hid a sigh with a smile and reflected that maybe he _should_ have gone with breaking and entering as his means of getting a few cats to introduce to Zero. X just didn’t like knowing that the caretakers of those animals would have to assume they’d been killed and eaten if they disappeared like that. Leave a note? What kind of note could he leave? That he’d stolen their cats on behalf of a killer robot?

It wasn’t a good idea to show too much relief when they were finally done and loaded up, then there was getting out of sight before teleporting off, which took longer than one would think.

Fortunately all the animal inspection and adopter interrogation meant he had a fairly short list of animals to introduce to Zero, he reflected, trying to look on the bright side.

* * *

“So they’re like plants.”

X wondered what Zero meant by that. Emotional support lifeforms?

The last Lightbot (although he hoped not, from some of what Wily’s remnant let slip) didn’t sigh. “Well, they’re organic life,” at least. None of the three cats X released had much interest in Zero. They instead scattered around X’s main room, or cave, as he lifted each of them up out of their traveling case. One of them was already taking refuge in one of the plants.

Zero frowned at that one: X had told him not to step on plants _ages_ ago, from the more-recently-activated unit’s perspective, so if this organic creature was going to go and do that, it wasn’t a good one.

Well, that cried out for yet another ‘rules are situational’ discussion, not to mention that ‘differences between how animals and people should act, and yes, I’m aware that humans are technically animals’ was difficult to handle with Zero’s father butting in. At least with the debate keeping Dr. Wily occupied, Zero tended to get irritated with his father and go off to listen to Dr. Light instead. X’s father did have some experience with children, even if he wasn’t as good at articulating the finer points of ethics as he was with robotics details. As an academic it wasn’t his field, but Zero wasn’t an academic period.

It seemed to be working out well enough so far.

“More like humans,” Zero acknowledged, checking his database. “Kill other living things, including for pleasure…” There, now he looked contemplative. Considering whether that just sounded ‘like humans’ or ‘like Zero.’

X slid a tablet (it _was_ very nice to have access to Dr. Wily’s materials reserves and processing and construction facilities) with feline hunting statistics and how they were used to manage vermin populations over to him. Zero just had to glance at it to get access and pull in the data, if he didn’t already have it infected. There was a difference between data being on an infected system and Zero being aware of it, otherwise the Copy…

He stopped that line of thought.

Tabbing over to the new owners’ guide to interacting with cats and how to choose a cat who would be compatible with a certain kind of owner he’d also loaded into the tablet, he asked Zero to, “Get acquainted with these three and see if you like any of them while I feed the rest?”

Nano-assemblies capable of not just creating chips but constructing taurine and pseudo-cells… Regardless of his feelings about Dr. Wily’s ethics, especially pertaining to free will and logic-bypassing, the former human’s lab equipment was as borderline miraculous as Zero’s capabilities.

Letting a pretty little half-grown cream-colored tom push his head up into X’s hand, X wondered about the twins. Breeding facilities couldn’t use as many tomcats as queens (for the sake of genetic diversity they _should_ , but they also had to use their rationed meat as efficiently as possible, since they were feeding animals while humans went malnourished), and while Iris and Colonel weren’t copies of X and were free to decide to do what they wanted now, they had been designed with an aptitude for social interaction. You couldn’t get good at anything without practice, so that meant they seemed more eager to make friends than the rest of the former heralds. More lonely?

The two of them seeking Zero out was… worrying. Especially because they were somewhat based on X. It wasn’t just memories of the Copy: had Dr. Wily given them additional programming to ensure loyalty besides the virus? X _should_ like the idea of people making friends with Zero, but the idea of people being controlled, being _forced_ to seek others out and obey them made his skin crawl so much that seeing the two of them around Zero, especially Iris seeming so eager to hang off Zero’s every word, was… And of course Zero picked up on that and had the two of them stay away from him, at least while X was around.

If they were just lonely, X didn’t want to make that more painful for them, so… If Iris was just a naturally affectionate person, he hoped she’d like a cat.

* * *

While Iris liked her cat, X did not like having dead mice brought up to him. “So, you’re… teaching them how to hunt?” he asked Zero, wondering what else he’d expected.

Given Zero’s stare, he was also wondering what else X had expected him to do with them.

Well, X supposed this was better than Zero calling Sigma and the other baby androids useless for not being able to improve fast enough to satisfy him without any teaching. “I’m glad that you’re bonding,” he said, knowing he was condemning himself to more presents. If he’d wanted a pet for Zero that was from a species of organic life that didn’t have to kill or at least damage other living things in order to survive, he… would have been out of luck, come to think of it. Even plants could be quite vicious, which was sadly understandable when they didn’t have the option of retreating if some other organism tried to harm them. There were robots, but X wanted something Zero couldn’t just take over the instant he got frustrated.

It was hopefully worth it to see the cats throw themselves onto Zero’s lap, appreciating the waste heat from his systems the same way they claimed unguarded tablets and consoles. It was Zero more than X who didn’t know what to do when they dug up X’s plants (X had taken that as a given), and perhaps the icing on the cake was Dr. Wily’s remnant screaming when he found the mice Zero colonized his base with so the cats had something to hunt nested behind a panel.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m betting that bees and most other pollinators can’t survive outside sealed and climate-controlled areas anymore, and there goes half or more of the stuff in your grocery’s produce section.
> 
> I don’t even want to think about the price per ounce of chocolate in this universe.
> 
> A lot of RMs are described as being for environmental repair in one way or another. My headcanon is that the main RM timeline went for robotics, .EXE went for communications tech and ours went for biotech. And without biotech, there’d be a hell of a lot more environmental damage. 
> 
> I also think that our universe’s understanding of programming/number and average skill level of trained programmers is much better than theirs.
> 
> After a certain point, they had robot masters to do a lot of the high-level tasks. We don’t, so we had to figure out how to try to do things like that ourselves. Who’s going to go back and invent an abacus if they start out with a calculator? And then someone takes that calculator away? 
> 
> Robot masters have to be able to handle imponderables, and a lot of the other things the human brain can do. The issue is that this means not exactly following programming, the capacity for judgment calls… Eliminating all robots with free will and emotions meant that the style of programming 20XX had, which presupposed those capabilities, no longer worked. They headed down a certain branch of the tech tree, based on Dr. Light’s work, and then it was chopped out from under them. 
> 
> Our computer programs do exactly what they’re told. They can only do exactly what they’re told. There’s a kind of strike in Australia called Work To Rule. Humanity’s tech base assumed robots that were intelligent and would use that intelligence to be helpful, go out of their way to get their jobs done. 
> 
> Then their robots were reduced to the mental capabilities of 1980s robots in our ‘verse, while their programmers had learned to program for and assume the capabilities of 20XX ‘verse robots. 
> 
> The ‘cleft point,’ or genius we got and they didn’t (like we didn’t get Drs. Light and Wily) I like to use is Dr. Borland, The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives and Father of the Green Revolution. Go look him up.
> 
> In India alone, he saved an area of virgin wilderness the size of California from being cleared to plant crops. If that agricultural revolution hadn’t happened, there’d be more area cleared for crops, less functional environment, fewer nice things like the Amazon Rainforest, more runoff into the ocean resulting in nasty stuff happening to our other main source of oxygen… 
> 
> I set 20XX’s overall tech as equivalent to our world’s 20XX tech level. Little more over here, little less over there. Then they lost their big advantage.


End file.
